Minister Dedonder fires young female soldier involved in torture of “friend”: “Honor of military function seriously undermined” | Interior

The hallucinatory facts took place in the summer of 2020. A young female non-commissioned officer, who works in the barracks of Melsbroek, lured a “friend” into an ambush with four friends, including two more soldiers. The victim is said to have stolen all the savings of one of them, no less than 100,000 euros, when he was given shelter with that friend for a while. Because a fortune teller had confirmed the suspicion of the theft, the five friends decided to retrieve the money themselves.

The female non-commissioned officer was used as decoy. The gang invites the man, who is single, to a party at one of their own in Philippeville. The unsuspecting victim accepts that invitation and takes his two children with him. Upon arrival, he is almost immediately put under pressure and accused of the theft of 100,000 euros. He denies, but that does not impress the friends.

They take his car keys and mobile phone from him and take him to a garden house. That had been converted in advance into a kind of torture chamber, with a plastic garden chair in the middle with ropes attached to it. The victim was tied hand and foot. He struggles and the chair breaks, but that doesn’t stop the friends from carrying out their plan.

The hostage man is threatened, insulted, humiliated and beaten for hours. Later, the petty officer admits that she grabbed the victim by the throat so that another member of the gang, also a soldier, could pour water on his face “to make him feel like he was drowning.” “It was to stress him out a bit, like when you put someone’s head in the dark, say in a burlap sack. It is not to suffocate him, but to put pressure on him, to cause him stress,” the young female soldier told the investigating judge.

Because the other four are drunk, she and a companion drive to the victim’s house. There everything is turned upside down in the search for the 100,000 euros, in vain. Meanwhile, the victim in the torture garden house is still being treated firmly. Among other things, he receives a blow to the ear, which means that he later needs an operation on the eardrum. His clothes are taken off and a metal object is thrown in his face. The friends threaten to insert a tampon soaked in alcohol and put out a lit cigarette on his body.

It doesn’t get that far in the end. After a horror night, the victim gets his keys back and he is released. He drives back home with his children, who had been sleeping in the house all this time. Later, the man, who has come out of the night of torture both physically and mentally badly damaged, lodges a complaint with the Libramont police.

The petty officer and the four other gang members are arrested on suspicion of inhumane treatment, hostage-taking and assault. In January, the Public Prosecution Service is seeking a 10-year prison sentence against all five defendants at the Namur Criminal Court, and they will be sentenced on June 14.

Minister of Defense Ludivine Dedonder does not wait for that verdict and decided to take the non-commissioned officer out of service at the end of March. In her decision, the minister emphasized the extreme seriousness of the acts, which were committed in gangs and at night. “The behavior of the first sergeant has seriously undermined the confidence that the public should place in the armed forces and has seriously undermined the dignity and honor of the military office, her behavior is unworthy of the quality of a soldier,” it said.

The soldier contested her dismissal with the Council of State, which decided to temporarily suspend the disciplinary sanction pending the verdict. According to the Council of State, it took much too long before a decision was made to fire the non-commissioned officer. Pending the verdict and the final judgment of the Council of State, the non-commissioned officer therefore remains in the service of the Belgian army.