A Palestinian man was found dead in a park in the Belgian city of Antwerp with his hands and feet tied, leaving the cause of his death a mystery amid authorities’ suggestion that it may have been a suicide.
According to Belgian media, a passerby found a dead man in a grassy area of Antwerp’s Stadspark on Wednesday last week, with the body reportedly having been there for over 24 hours.
Although no ID documents were found on him, he was later reportedly identified as a 26-year-old Palestinian man who was – according to some reports – an asylum seeker rather than a resident in Belgium.
The fact that the deceased man had his hands and feet tied at the time of his death has led many in the public, including investigators, to treat the death as murder.
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Authorities have played down that possibility, however, with the spokesperson for Antwerp’s Public Prosecutor’s Office, Kristof Aerts, telling The Brussels Times newspaper last Wednesday that “I understand that there are a lot of wild stories going around on social media … a judicial investigation was started, with the investigating judge, public prosecutor, lab, forensic doctor and investigators on site. This showed that several tracks are possible.”
Two days later, last Friday, Aerts stated that the “autopsy did not clarify the cause of death, so all leads remain open”, with it apparently being possible that the Palestinian man died by suicide, despite his hands and feet being tied.
This morning, the Antwerp Public Prosecutor’s Office provided its latest update by revealing that investigators do not believe the death was a murder after analyses of the crime scene and autopsy findings.
“It does not appear at this stage of the investigation that there was any criminal intent or third-party intervention”, the Prosecutor was reported to have said, emphasising that the “investigation continues”.