Belgian Police Officer Convicted for Leaking Photo in Forest Murder Case

The verdict was delivered on Friday. Philippe N. was convicted of violating professional secrecy, violating investigation confidentiality, and breaching the law on personal data protection. He received a sentence of 15 months in prison, fully suspended for three years, for helping neighborhood bosses in the Orban district of Forest to search for suspects in the murder of Soufiane Benali in 2020, reports Belga. He is accused of sending the photo - from the BNG, the General National Database - of Mohamed-Amine Dardour, the alleged perpetrator of the 23-year-old man’s murder, to three neighborhood delinquents known as "sheriffs".

These individuals had improvised as investigators. They thought they would go searching for the two murder suspects, Mohamed-Amine Dardour and Youssef Jeddi, as far as Marseille, to bring them back to the police authorities. These individuals with numerous criminal records had seized the mobile phones of witnesses or suspects in the investigation and explored their contents. The court also ordered P.N. to pay Mohamed-Amine Dardour a symbolic one euro in damages. The police officer was, however, acquitted of the charges of criminal association, forgery, and hacking. The "sheriffs" had indeed assaulted one of these people in the police station’s waiting room.

As for the two other defendants, a colleague and a former colleague of P.N., the court acquitted them.