Eighteen Belgian students were found guilty on Friday of their role in the 2018 death of a university student during a brutal and degrading initiation ritual and were sentenced to community service and fines.
Sanda Dia was 20 when he died in a hospital in December 2018 after he and two other first-year students endured two days of cruel hazing to get into an elite student fraternity, Reuzegom.
Dia was forced to drink excessive amounts of alcohol and fish oil and made to sit in ice-cold water before passing out.
The students were found guilty of their role in Dia’s unintentional death and degrading treatment, but were acquitted of intentionally administering harmful substances that resulted in death and willful neglect, court spokesman Judge Els De Brauwer said.
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Eighteen Belgian students were found guilty of their role in the death of a university student in 2018 during a brutal and degrading initiation ritual. (Fox News)
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The students received sentences of up to 300 hours of community service and a fine of €400 each. The prosecution had sought sentences of up to 50 months in prison for some of them.
The high salt content in fish oil was a major element in Dia’s death and the court ruled that students could not have known about the potentially fatal impact on the freshman. De Brauwer said that as soon as the students realized the seriousness of his condition, they tried to help him and took him to the hospital.
The other two students became seriously ill, but the hazing was not part of the court case.
De Brauwer said that all 18 who participated in the hazing were guilty because “they were all there. Nobody interrupted. Nobody questioned it.”
After Dia’s death, Belgian universities sought to ensure that autumn initiation rituals for first-year students were less degrading.
