Final suspect in Mallorca fatal assault released from custody

On Wednesday, the court in Lelystad decided to release Sanil B. from pre-trial custody. B. is one of several men suspected of involvement in the fatal assault of Carlo Heuvelman in Mallorca last year. He was the last suspect still in custody. Like the others, B. remains a suspect in the case, NU.nl reports.

The 27-year-old victim was vacationing with friends in Mallorca when his group clashed with another group of Dutch tourists during the early hours of July 14 last year. Heuvelman died of head trauma in hospital on July 18. The investigation into his death is slowly coming to an end, but it is still unclear who applied the fatal violence. All suspects deny involvement.

During Wednesday's hearing, the Public Prosecution Service revealed that the authorities eavesdropped on the suspects on their way back to prison after the previous hearing. According to the court, B., Mees T., and Hein B. seemed to suggest that someone else was responsible for Heuvelman's death in that conversation. But the suspects say that they were just speculating. They don't know what happened to Heuvelman and were trying to reason it out, they said.

The court also discussed an undercover operation in the prison in Houten, in which undercover cops struck up a conversation with B. According to the prosecutor, B. acknowledged kicking Heuvelman by saying "ja" - Dutch for "yes" - when asked about it. But B.'s lawyer Peter Plasman argued that his client said "la" - "no" in Moroccan. 

According to the lawyer, the rest of the conversation also shows that B. was surprised that Heuvelman's DNA was found on his shoe. He repeatedly told the undercover officers that this was impossible because he had not been near the victim. 

The next hearing will be at the end of October.