Madani Bouhouche

Madani Bouhouche (June 14, 1952 - November 22, 2005 [ cite news | title="Secrets Untold" | publisher=Expatica.com | date=July 22, 2006 | url=http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=24&story_id=26594&name=Secrets+untold en icon ] ) was a former Belgian gendarme with the Belgian Gendarmerie, convicted in 1995 for various crimes, including two murders.

Life and career

Madani "Dany" Bouhouche was born in Brussels, son of an Algerian father and Belgian mother. He started his police career with the "Bijzondere Opsporings Brigade" (BOB), a special investigative branch of the Gendarmerie, the former military police of Belgium. Soon after joining the BOB, Bouhouche developed illegal activities with other gendarmes of the BOB. One of them, Robert Beijer, later setup a private detective bureau with Bouhouche in 1983, the "Agence de Recherches et d'Informations".

Arrests and trials

Bouhouche was first arrested in January 1986 as a suspected murderer of Juan Mendez, a FN weapons engineer and sales manager for Latin America. Bouhouche was released in November 1988. After a diamond dealer in Antwerp was murdered in 1989, Bouhouche was again arrested. Bouhouche was convicted of this murder in 1995, receiving a 20-year sentence. His accomplice, Robert Beijer, received fourteen years. In that trial they were also convicted of murdering a security guard in 1982. The trial took more than five months, and was one of the longest in Belgian history.

Some people have claimed that Bouhouche and Beijer were part of the Nijvel gang, also called the Tueurs du Brabant Wallon, but both have always denied this.

Post-parole life and death

On September 15, 2000, Bouhouche was freed on parole. He moved to the French Pyrenees, living isolated in the small city of Fougax-et-Barrineuf, being responsible for a rental accommodation of an old friend, Alain Weykamp.

He died in November 2005, decapitated by a piece of wood while cutting a tree with a chainsaw in his garden. The French police knew nothing of his criminal past, and allowed his body to be cremated. Bouhouche's death only became known in Belgium when the investigative team of the Nijvel gang looked into his records as a previous suspect.

After his death, an investigative team looked through the home where Bouhouche lived, finding a Remington riot gun. Because the Nijvel gang also used riot guns, a ballistics test was performed (The gang used Winchester riot guns, which accept the same ammunition). Weapons experts concluded in June 2006 that the Remington riot gun was not used in the Nijvel gang attacks.

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