Will the last suspect of the deadly home robbery in Gees in 2016 still go to jail six years later? The court in Assen will decide today on the 10-year prison sentence that the Public Prosecution Service (OM) has demanded against 30-year-old Fidan J. from Belgium.
The Public Prosecution Service assumes theft with violence resulting in death. The originally Albanian is the last of the four men who stood trial for the gruesome robbery, in which 69-year-old Koert Elders was killed. Two Belgians were previously sentenced to 13 years in prison. An Amsterdammer was sentenced to 10 years in prison and TBS with compulsory treatment.
In 2019, the court ruled that J.’s case had to be redone. The court in Assen did not reach a conviction due to a serious procedural error. The court found that this error should have no consequences for the suspects and decided that the court still had to reach a judgment. That will happen today.
J. has since disappeared without a trace. He therefore did not show up at his trial in Assen two weeks ago. His lawyer would not or could not tell the man’s whereabouts, she told the judges. According to the prosecutor: “A man who does not shy away from violence.”
J. has been convicted at least five times for, among other things, participation in a criminal organization and drug offenses. In 2019, he was sentenced to 50 months in prison. At the beginning of this year, the media in Belgium wrote about a criminal case of which J. was part. That case was about a criminal organization that was involved in drugs and weapons on a large scale.
The Antwerp public prosecutor’s office demanded a prison sentence of 10 years against J. from Borgerhout. That case has not yet been concluded. In the Gees case it has never become clear what exactly J.’s role was. The public prosecutor said he had sufficient evidence that J. was in Gees that night. According to the Public Prosecution Service, this is apparent from telephone data and camera images, among other things.
“A bigger boy who let others take the violent chestnuts out of the fire and tried to keep himself out of harm’s way as much as possible”, is the conviction of the OM.