Hasselt (Brussels Morning Newspaper) – A 35-year-old man from Heusden-Zolder was sentenced to 14 months in prison and fined €800 for assaulting a 38-year-old off-duty police officer outside Club Versuz, Hasselt on October 28, 2023.
A 35-year-old man from Heusden-Zolder was sentenced to 14 months in prison and fined €800 by the Hasselt criminal court on Tuesday March 18, 2025. The man was found guilty of violently assaulting a police officer outside the Versuz nightclub in Hasselt, Belgium.
The lawyer for the police officer, Lorien Vandoren, said that the man who attacked him didn’t know him and that there was no reason for the attack. She said that the attack was senseless and that the attacker had been in a fight inside the club before attacking the officer.
The court decided that the attacker had to pay the officer €4,736. They mentioned that this money pay for the officer’s medical bills, the money he lost because he couldn’t work, and because he was injured.
The battered victim was initially incapacitated for 7 days, but later this was extended. There is a witness statement and there is camera footage,
attorney Vandoren said.
Why was a 35-year-old sentenced for attacking an officer in Hasselt?
According to the lawyer for the man who attacked the police officer, there was a reason for the attack. The lawyer said that the attack happened on a night like Halloween and that the officer had been staring at the attacker in a way that made him feel uncomfortable. The lawyer also said that when the 2 were outside, the officer tripped and fell, not because the attacker knocked him down.
The lawyer also mentioned that the attacker was sad and was getting help for his mental health. The lawyer said that these things made the attacker do what he did. But the court didn’t believe this story because the video from the security cameras and what people who saw it said showed something different.
The court said that the assailant could not hold his temper and wanted to injure the officer. They asserted that the video revealed that following the assault, the attacker just went away without helping the officer, suggesting that he was attempting to escape.
The court also added that the attacker’s claim that he was treated unfairly due to his race was not true. The court declared that basing violence on race is not acceptable. The court also remembered that the attacker had been sentenced to two years in prison in 2021 for intentionally injuring someone.
The 38-year-old victim, a policeman who was off-duty, was attacked by the man close to Hasselt’s Club Versuz late at night on October 28, 2023, after an evening out with one of his colleagues. He stopped when the officer’s partner and a security guard pulled the attacker away.
The officer had a broken nose, a concussion, and a cut above his eye. He was injured so badly that he couldn’t work for a week, and then he had to take more time off. There were witnesses who saw what happened, and there was video from security cameras that showed what happened.
