Suspect in Brussels Femicide Released After Passing Polygraph Test

Relief for the suspect in a femicide, who has been in pre-trial detention for a year and a half. "We can confirm that the accused is being held in detention under the modality of electronic surveillance by decision of the council chamber of August 9, 2024," the Brussels public prosecutor’s office confirms through its press service to La Dernière Heure. His release from prison follows a polygraph test, the "lie detector." "He took the polygraph test, which turned out to be positive for him. He was able to reunite with his children," comments his lawyer Carine Couquelet.

A 60-year-old woman was killed on October 12, 2022 in a building on Rue de Mérode in Saint-Gilles. The crime was disguised as a suicide, according to the investigation. It was a neighbor who alerted the police when he saw the victim hanging from the balcony on the fourth floor overlooking the block of a building on Rue de Mérode in Saint-Gilles. Suspected of being the perpetrator, the victim’s husband was arrested and then placed in detention due to his behavior during the intervention of the firefighters and the police. At the scene, the medical examiner had concluded that the thesis of murder rather than suicide.

The neighborhood of Meryeme had a hard time believing that the sexagenarian, described as a pious housewife who had made her pilgrimage to Mecca, could have taken her own life.

Furthermore, the forensic examination concluded that the thesis of voluntary strangulation by a third party, while an expert report requested by the defense favors that of suicide. A panel of experts would lean towards the thesis of murder. For the time being, the exact circumstances that led to Meryeme’s death remain to be determined. The authorities suspect that a second marriage in preparation in Morocco could have been at the origin of the murder, according to sources close to the investigation. A source mentions "also the hearing of one of the couple’s children in which he would mention a previous attempted defenestration a few days before the traumatic discovery."