A bust found in a suitcase in a building in Antwerp (northern Belgium) has been identified as belonging to a 50-year-old Chinese woman, who may have been the victim of a prostitution ring, the city prosecutor's office announced on Thursday. Flemish.
On January 27, the police, called for a suspicious suitcase abandoned in the basement of an apartment building, had discovered "
the upper part of a woman's body
".
Thirty searches
Other parts of the body were then recovered from other locations in the same basement, where a security perimeter had been established.
An investigating judge was seized for "
murder
".
Now "
the body is officially identified as that of a 50-year-old woman of Chinese nationality,
" the prosecution said in a statement.
According to a source close to the case, this murder is probably the work of a prostitution network of Chinese women who was the target this week of a major dragnet.
"
The hypothesis is that this criminal organization (trafficking in human beings) is at the origin
," the source told AFP.
“
It is possible that the facts have a link with the middle of the Chinese prostitution
”, underlined for its part the parquet floor of Antwerp.
As part of Belgian justice investigations targeting this environment, - separate from the murder investigation - around thirty searches were carried out on Tuesday in Belgium and Spain, leading to the hearing of around thirty suspects.
Read alsoBulgaria at the heart of human trafficking
These are mainly men of Chinese origin, who organized prostitution in private places, hotels or vacation homes, via appointments made on specialized sites, according to the federal prosecutor's office.
Nine of these suspects were imprisoned in Belgium after their indictment for "
trafficking in human beings
" and "
money laundering
", according to the same source.
Belgian justice demands the extradition of three other suspects arrested in Spain (for one of them) and in Switzerland.
Tuesday during searches in Belgium, the police had discovered "
more than 20
" Chinese women alleged victims of the network.
They were taken care of by the authorities.