Former Belgian gendarme Robert Beijer has been arrested in Thailand. His papers are not in order. The former state police officer earlier served a 14-year jail sentence in Belgium following a conviction for murder and robbery. In the past he has been repeatedly linked to the crimes of the Gang of Nivelles, an organised crime unit held responsible for a spate of attacks in which 28 people died in the Eighties. Beijer’s arrest now has triggered fresh hopes the mystery of the Gang of Nivelles will be unravelled. But who is Robert Beijer?
Robert Beijer joined the gendarmerie, Belgium’s former state police force, in the Seventies. He works for the drug section of the special detection squad BOB together with Madani Bouhouche, another name that regularly appears in the Gang of Nivelles saga.
Beijer and Bouhouche are caught tapping a colleague’s phone and are sacked from the drug section. They then decide to leave the police service and establish a private detective agency. The two former detectives are linked to a raft of suspicious incidents including the theft of weapons from the gendarmerie’s special intervention squad and an attack on Herman Vernaillen, a police officer looking into police involvement in drug trafficking.
Later they are suspected of involvement in the murder of arms dealer Juan Mendez and a bullion theft at Brussels Airport, when a security guard is murdered.
In 1994 the two men are charged with the murder of an Antwerp diamond trader, Juan Mendez. Beijer gets 14 years.
In recent years he’s been living in Thailand where he has now been arrested.
Neither Beijer nor Bouhouche, who has meanwhile died, have ever been formally charged in connection with Gang of Nivelles atrocities. In his memoires Beijer denies all involvement. Still, the hope is that he will now be able to shed light on one of the shadiest episodes of the Eighties in Belgium.