A thirty-year prison sentence for Sonja T.M. was requested on Monday at the Brussels Criminal Court by General Counsel Estelle Arpigny. Thirty-eight-year-old Sonja T.M. is being judged for triple infanticide and arson, committed in February 2015 in Lennik.
The General Counsel considered that the accusations against the defendant were proven beyond any reasonable doubt. Furthermore, the judge estimates that no attenuating circumstances may be granted, considering the fact that she denies the obvious and feels no remorse. She has thus requested the maximum punishment against her: 30 years in prison.
“According to the defendant, the children were playing outside, near the outbuilding.” This does not hold water as the children were ill with the flu. Why would they have gone outside to play? Furthermore, a neighbour explained that he always heard them when they played outside, and it was not the case on that day,” the prosecution revealed.
Sonja T.M. is being charged for having set fire to her home outbuilding, situated on Swartenbroekstraat, in Lennik, on 11 February 2015. The bodies of three children had been discovered in the rubble. They were the defendant’s three daughters, aged 2, 4 and 6.
Sonja T.M. is confessing to arson. She asserted that she wanted to burn her husband’s documents, which were stored in this extension used as a den, because she was angry with him. But she asserts that she never intended to take the lives of her children.
Nevertheless, the expert assessments have shown that the victims’ bodies contained traces of lorazepam, a tranquilizer, and that it was the mattress on which these were found lying side by side that had been ignited.
The Brussels Times
