What do the 18-month sentences for two home burglars near Brussels tell us?

The Brussels

Place

Brussels

Judicial centre where the burglary prosecution was handled.

Why it matters

Judicial centre where the burglary prosecution was handled.

About

The City of Brussels is the largest municipality and historical centre of the Brussels-Capital Region, as well as the capital of the French Community of Belgium, the Flemish Region, and Belgium. The City of Brussels is also the administrative centre of the European Union, as it hosts a number of principal EU institutions in its European Quarter.

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Place

Antwerp

City where police intercepted the suspects’ vehicle and recovered jewellery.

Why it matters

City where police intercepted the suspects’ vehicle and recovered jewellery.

About

Antwerp is a city and a municipality in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is the capital and largest city of Antwerp Province, and the third-largest municipality in Belgium by area at 208.22 km2 (80.39 sq mi). With a population of 565,039, it is the most populous municipality in Belgium, and with a metropolitan population of over 1.2 million people, the country's second-largest metropolitan area after Brussels.

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The case joined evidence from two municipalities and an arrest more than 40 kilometres away. Prosecutors said the men entered the Sint-Genesius-Rode house by forcing a rear window. A neighbour’s surveillance camera recorded the intrusion and the vehicle used to leave the scene. Police intercepted that vehicle in Antwerp on 25 April with five people inside, and investigators identified the two defendants from the footage. One of them was carrying jewellery traced to a burglary in Londerzeel on the same day.

The defendants took different positions before the court. The 43-year-old admitted both burglaries, while his lawyer sought a suspended sentence and said it was his first encounter with the justice system. The 67-year-old accepted involvement in the Sint-Genesius-Rode offence but denied participating in the Londerzeel burglary, arguing that the jewellery had been found on the other man. His lawyer requested an acquittal on that count and a suspended sentence for the admitted offence. The court rejected that distinction, concluding that the available evidence sufficiently established both men’s involvement in both break-ins. Neither the published reports nor an accessible judgment specified how many months of each sentence were suspended, whether compensation was ordered or whether either defendant will appeal.

For the households involved, the immediate loss is more concrete than the headline sentence: cash and personal possessions disappeared, a window was forced and residents were left to document the damage and secure their homes. Belgium’s FPS Economy says damage to doors or windows after a burglary may be covered under a home policy, but theft protection itself is commonly an optional extension whose exact conditions vary by contract. That distinction matters to tenants, homeowners and small businesses because the bill can include repairs, replacement locks, emergency work and uninsured belongings as well as the stolen property.

Insurance federation Assuralia previously estimated that theft cover cost about €100 a year on average and that insurers paid roughly €3,800 per burglary or attempted burglary involving homes and small commercial premises in its 2022 data. Those figures are a market benchmark rather than an estimate of the damage in this case, whose total financial cost has not been disclosed. Assuralia also advises victims to report a burglary to police and include the police record with their insurance claim. The commercial relevance is therefore real but secondary: this remains primarily a justice story about evidence, responsibility and sentencing, not a broad signal about insurers’ profitability or premiums.

The national trend provides useful scale. Federal Police data show 35,438 registered residential burglaries in Belgium in 2025, down from 38,349 in 2024, a decline of about 7.6%. The police caution that their burglary category includes both completed offences and attempts, and that recorded crime is not identical to the true incidence of crime. Even so, the latest total was also well below the 48,901 cases registered in 2019. A longer decline does not make an individual break-in trivial, and local patterns can diverge sharply from the national picture.

The route through Sint-Genesius-Rode, Londerzeel and Antwerp also illustrates why burglary investigations do not fit neatly within municipal or regional borders. The first two municipalities are in Flemish Brabant

Place

Flemish Brabant

Belgian province containing Sint-Genesius-Rode and Londerzeel.

Why it matters

Belgian province containing Sint-Genesius-Rode and Londerzeel.

About

Flemish Brabant is a province of Flanders, one of the three regions of Belgium. It borders on the Belgian provinces of Antwerp, Limburg, Liège, Walloon Brabant, Hainaut and East Flanders. Flemish Brabant also surrounds the Brussels-Capital Region. Its capital is Leuven. It has an area of 2,118 km2 (818 sq mi) which is divided into two administrative districts containing 65 municipalities.

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The form of the punishment requires some care. An 18-month sentence does not necessarily mean 18 months continuously spent in a prison cell, particularly because part was suspended. FPS Justice explains that sentences of between six months and three years fall under rules allowing applications for measures such as electronic monitoring, limited detention or conditional release. Such arrangements are not automatic: the sentence-execution judge assesses eligibility, risks to victims and efforts to pay compensation. Because the published court report does not disclose the unsuspended portion, any attempt to calculate the defendants’ likely time in custody would be speculative.

The timing also places the judgment just before Belgium’s planned transition to a new Criminal Code

The next formal step is whether either defendant challenges the judgment. An appeal could reopen questions about the evidence connecting the older defendant to the Londerzeel burglary or about the sentence imposed. If no appeal is lodged and the ruling becomes final, the authorities will determine how the unsuspended portions are executed. For the victims, the outstanding questions are different: whether all property was recovered, whether they sought compensation and how much of their loss their insurance covers. None of those details has yet been made public.