A pair of Algerian men were found guilty and sentenced by a Belgian court last week for the roles they played in the gruesome murder of a gay man in 2009.
A court in the French-speaking city of Liège last Friday sentenced Algerian nationals Fethi Rezzioui, aged 39, and Ahmed Freha, aged 38, for their roles in the murder of Luc Verheyen, a 45-year-old gay Belgian man, who was stabbed to death in his own home in Grâce-Hollogne in 2009, RTC reports.
The two convicts, who were identified in connection to the murder years after it had taken place via physical evidence found at the crime scene, are said to have taken Verheyen to his home where they engaged in sexual activity before Fethi Rezzioui went on to stab the man to death.
Fethi Rezzioui, who is thought to have carried out the murder, was not present at the trial and is believed to be somewhere in Africa. On the other hand, his co-defendant, Freha, who was present at the trial, was found guilty of robbery with violence since there was not any physical evidence that could prove that he actively or passively participated in the murder of Verheyen. For his crimes, Freha was handed a five-year suspended prison sentence.
Rezzioui, whose whereabouts are still unknown, was found guilty of murder and robbery, and as a result, the court sentenced him in absentia to life in prison.
Since the migrant crisis of 2015, violent crimes carried out by migrants against members of the LGBT community have become increasingly common.
Earlier this year, in April, a Congolese migrant brutally murdered a French trans man because of his sexual orientation. Police discovered the 50-year-old victim, Paul Migeon, inside his apartment in Reims, with his throat slit and wounds to his neck and vertebrae. Later, the Congolese suspect confessed to the crime, telling investigators that he had raped Migeon and stabbed him repeatedly with scissors before setting his apartment alight to erase any physical evidence.
In the same month, a court in Germany began prosecuting 21-year-old Syrian asylum seeker Abdullah al-Haj Hasan for targeting a gay couple and stabbing one of them to death in the streets of Dresden. It was later revealed that Hasan had arrived in Germany in 2015 amid the migrant crisis and was subsequently granted status as an asylum seeker. As Remix News previously reported, a forensic psychologist who had talked for many hours with Hasan noted that he was more than likely motivated by Islamic extremism.
Last fall, viral video footage of a gang of migrant youths beating two teenage victims in the city of Leuven sent shockwaves through Belgium’s LGBT community. After beating the two teenage boys and making them lick their shoes, members of the gang can be heard using the term ‘Zemmel’ – a common slur used by Moroccans to describe homosexuals. Later, the Belgian news outlet Het Laatste Nieuws linked the disturbing video to a gang of migrant youths called “Criminal Justice” or “Criminal System”, which is known for hunting LGBT people in the country.