Sentences ranging from 18 months to five years in prison were requested on Monday before the Belgian court in Hasselt (north-east) against 18 defendants tried for the death of a student, Sanda Dia, during a hazing in 2018, according to the Belga agency.
“We are of the opinion that these eighteen people were guilty of having administered harmful substances which resulted in death,”
the attorney general said, quoted by the agency.
According to him, they are also guilty of
“degrading treatment”
in particular.
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Read alsoBelgium: 18 people in court for the death of a black student during a hazing
"They did not want death (...) But they wanted an extremely traumatic baptism, physically and mentally, in which the risks were ignored"
, continued the representative of the public ministry.
The trial has been interrupted until next Monday, due to a request issued Friday by the president of the court to reclassify the facts as
"assaults causing death without intention to give it".
The 18 defendants were members of the Flemish Reuzegom fraternity, now dissolved.
Sanda Dia, a 20-year-old mixed-race student, had undergone a series of ordeals on December 4 and 5, 2018 during a “baptism” to integrate this well-established fraternity into the renowned Catholic University of Louvain (KU Leuven).
On the first day, he had to swallow a large quantity of alcohol without being able to hydrate himself to lower his blood alcohol level.
On the second day, in an isolated chalet on the outskirts of Antwerp, he notably had to swallow a salty preparation made from fish oil, then stay outside in the cold in a hole filled with icy water.
Admitted on the evening of the 5th to the emergency room in a state of hypothermia and completely dehydrated, he died in the Antwerp hospital on December 7 following cerebral edema, following the abnormally high sodium levels in his body.
The drama aroused emotion in Belgium where student baptisms are a well-established tradition, with their alcoholic evenings and their share of slippages.
In September 2020, an anti-racist collective called for demonstrations in Louvain in memory of the young man, presented as a victim of
“racism”
and
“humiliating”
practices in Reuzegom.
However, the possible racist connotation was not retained in the legal proceedings.
