An illegal migrant faces trial in Belgium for fatally stabbing a 22-year-old woman, although he claims the incident was accidental.
Illegal migrant Mohammed Dahmane, known by several other aliases including Youcef Bendhad, was living in a squat in the Droixhe area of Liege with two other men and 22-year-old Mégane. An argument was said to have broken out on March 9th, 2020 between Dahmane and Mégane’s boyfriend, who was also an illegal immigrant.
The victim’s boyfriend claimed the argument had broken out after the 22-year-old woman had refused sexual advances from Dahmane, newspaper La Dernière Heure reports.
Dahmane denied the allegations and blamed the fight on drug use, claiming that the other man had a knife on him at the time and that the woman was “unintentionally” injured as she tried to separate the two men as they fought.
Forensic experts, however, have claimed that the evidence in the case does not match Dahmane’s testimony and the victim was clearly stabbed in the throat.
Dahmane fled the scene after the attack and allegedly also stabbed another person in the neck at another squat — that victim surviving — and fled through several European countries before being apprehended in Spain in July of last year.
The case is not the first to see a young woman die at the hands of illegal immigrants in which drugs were also allegedly involved.
In 2018, Italian teenager Desiree Mariottini was found dead in an abandoned building in Rome used by drug dealers close to the city’s main railway station. It was later revealed that four illegal immigrants from Africa had drugged the 16-year-old, sexually assaulted her, and murdered her.
All four illegal immigrants, from Gambia, Senegal, and Nigeria, ,were found guilty, with two receiving life sentences and the two others being handed sentences of 27 and 24-and-a-half years in prison in June.