2023-10-03 04:29:00
Is he dead ? Is he alive? If so, where is he hiding? What does it look like ?
The DH learns that Wilhelmus, known as Wim, Beckmann will be tried at the beginning of January 2024 by the Antwerp Assize Court, fifteen years following the assassination in Merksplas, in his villa, of Anderlechtoise Samira Bekkar. A case over which there are gray areas while the accused, Wim Beckmann, has completely disappeared from circulation for years. “How is it possible to disappear”, ask Samira’s friends, whom we meet?
They draw a parallel with Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès wanted since 2011 in France for the assassination of his wife and their four children. Except that the Bekkar affair takes place in Belgium, has been going on since 2008 and there is something new: Wim Beckmann will be tried for having killed Samira Bekkar, voluntarily and with premeditation, on the night of Saturday 26 on Sunday July 27, 2008, two bullets in the head.
“Manipulative pervert”
This Sunday in summer 2008, the firefighters were alerted early in the morning for a fire in a villa in Merksplas, a wealthy suburb of Antwerp. During the intervention, they discovered, upstairs, the lifeless body of the young woman.
Samira Bekkar was born on March 3, 1981 in Berchem-Sainte-Agathe. She lived in Anderlecht. She and Beckmann had known each other for around eight years. According to those close to him, Samira wanted to leave him. She found him violent, lying, manipulative, perverted. Beckmann, according to her, “lived only for money, drugs and sex.” He was, for her, “a worthless man”.
Cocaine and violence
The evening started at a club, probably at Péplum on rue Defacqz in Ixelles. The establishment was what is known as an “adult entertainment club.”
Around 4 or 5 a.m., Beckmann wanted to take Samira home to Merksplas. What happened next, we will never know.
Relatives testified that Beckmann was “capable of much.” He became violent, they say, when he took cocaine. Beckmann “did not accept being resisted”. He “had done bad things” to Samira, such as abandoning her on the side of the highway, or making her take substances without her knowledge.
Leave
Wim Beckmann had made his fortune in the import-export of plasma screens and mobile phones, which he brought directly from Dubai. The investigation very quickly focused suspicion on him. Arrested although he denied it, the businessman was arrested then released following a few weeks. And then, one fine morning, Beckmann set sail.
The last photos date from June 2015. With a confident gait, he goes, all smiles, to the courthouse, a blue pencil case under his arm. He maintains his innocence. Justice is on the wrong track, he says. He has nothing to do with the death of Samira Bekkar. You have to look on the side of your enemies. “In business, you make enemies. I had them and that’s why I had security systems installed. If they didn’t work, it’s because I forgot to plug them in when we came back from Brussels. We broke into the property while we were sleeping. They went upstairs and found us in bed. They shot Samira and me.”
Beckmann was indeed shot. He had been shot, as he said. Except that none of the four shots really put his life in danger. After a few days, Beckmann, back on his feet, was released from the hospital. And following a few weeks of preventive treatment, he was released from prison. Free to move around. Free to go far away.
On his Facebook profile, the last trace of Beckmann dates back to November 19, 2015, a Thursday. That day, he had dinner at Alphaeus Bistro, a gastronomic establishment in Antwerp that he had obviously enjoyed. And then, nothing more. The great silence.
Samira Bekkar died on Sunday July 27 in the early morning. The next day she had to register for nursing training in Brussels.
Specialist lawyers
Samira Bekkar’s relatives are angry with the justice system. “It was she, in the end, who let him slip away.” As the trial approaches, they expect Beckmann to “behave like a man, to face his responsibilities instead of running away from them, and to come and explain himself instead of continuing to hide.”
As a civil party, the Bekkar family did not wish to speak. Two specialist lawyers, Hamid Elregardingi and Isaac Miller, will represent Samira’s father and sisters.
Wim Beckmann would be 66 years old. At this point, he is and remains presumed innocent. His trial will open on January 12, 2024. The jury will have been constituted the previous week. The preliminary hearing is set for November 14.
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