Investigators to pursue new lead in Brabant Killers case
The Court of Appeal in Hainaut has decided to pursue a new lead in the Brabant Killers case. New investigations will be carried out, the federal prosecutor’s office has confirmed.
The Brabant killings were a series of violent robberies that claimed the lives of 28 people. The crimes were committed in Belgium, mainly in supermarkets in the province of Brabant, between 1982 and 1985.
Investigators will now try to determine whether two men from northern France, brothers Thierry and Xavier Sliman, who both died several years ago, were involved.
In June 2024, the federal prosecutor’s office announced that it was closing the investigation after more than 40 years, because “no further active investigative measures could be taken”. However, the victims retained the right to consult the file and request further investigative measures.
Never questioned
Several civil parties did so, and in January, the Mons Indictment Division ordered an investigation into the testimony of two boys from Opwijk who, on 9 November 1985, a few hours before the deadly robbery of a Delhaize supermarket in Aalst, had noted the registration numbers of two cars that had been used in the attack.
The boys wrote down the number plates of the two vehicles and reported it to their father when the robbery hit the headlines. The father passed the information to the police. However, the witnesses were never questioned and no investigation was carried out at the Brussels company where one car had been registered as a company vehicle.
The court has now ordered that another lead be investigated, that of the Sliman brothers, who committed several gang robberies in northern France at the time of the Brabant killings.
According to Jean-Pierre Adam, a retired gendarme, several clues suggest the men may have been involved in the attacks in Belgium. Last month, France Télévision devoted a programme to this new angle, which has not been explored by the Belgian authorities.
Adam noticed that the crimes in Brabant took place while Thierry Sliman was not in prison. He allegedly confided to one of his friends during a visit to Belgium that he had committed a crime there.
Xavier Sliman was imprisoned on 19 March 1984 and Thierry on 30 September of the same year, until mid-1985. No crimes bearing the hallmarks of the Brabant Killers were committed in Belgium during that time.
Wanted notice
One of the identikit pictures of the suspects in the killings, released at the time, bore a striking resemblance to one of the Sliman brothers’ accomplices.
During an investigation into the murder of a restaurant owner in the 2000s, Adam discovered a wanted notice for the attack on an armoury in Wavre, the first crime allegedly committed by the Brabant Killers, in the French authorities’ file on Xavier Sliman.
Sliman bore a strong resemblance to the photo on the wanted notice, but this information was never passed on to the Belgian investigators.
#FlandersNewsService | A search for evidence in the Brabant Killers investigation in the Damse river in Damme, November 2022 © BELGA PHOTO KURT DESPLENTER
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