This problematic case goes back a few days and was relayed on Friday by the Flemish newspaper De Morgen. The “police of police” (Permanent Committee for the Control of Police Services) intends to determine how it is possible that the Foreigners Office “believed that they were adults”. De Morgen made it his front page on Friday: two 12-year-old Serbian girls (VJ and CJ), as well as a 10-year-old boy, found themselves in a closed center for illegal residents on Monday, the two girls in the center closed from Holsbeek (Flemish Brabant) and the boy to that of Merksplas (Antwerp). The three children had been arrested by the police on Sunday evening during an attempted break-in in Flémalle (province of Liège).
The daily writes that there are suspicions of forced crime and human trafficking around this case, and that the three children, without identity papers, spent a night in a police cell after their arrest. The next day, Monday, they were sent back to closed centres.
Normally, the police should, in the face of unaccompanied foreign minors, contact the Guardianship Service without delay, writes De Morgen. Still according to the daily, the Immigration Office indicates that in this case it received incorrect dates of birth from the police, which would have led to this referral to a center for “illegals”, where children have not not their place. When the closed centers noticed the young age of the new arrivals, they were finally entrusted to the Guardianship Service.
Committee P indicated on Friday that it wanted to shed light on this affair. On the basis of first contacts, it appears that the police were convinced from the start that they were three minors, he communicates. The trio was also placed in a police cell suitable for minors, adds the control committee. The return to closed centers, in a second time, is more mysterious. “A more in-depth investigation will have to reveal why the Foreigners Office believed that they were adults”, communicates the Committee P, which adds to have started an investigation “on the basis of the article” published Friday.