A U.S. Navy officer is under investigation in the death of his wife in Belgium, where he has been jailed since March, Belgian officials and media said.
A U.S. Army spokesman in Europe confirmed that a Navy lieutenant assigned to NATO Special Operations Headquarters in Mons, Belgium was under investigation. Stars and Stripes is withholding the officer’s name because he has not been charged.
The spokesman referred queries to the Belgian prosecutor’s office in Mons, 30 miles southwest of Brussels, because Belgium has jurisdiction over the case.
Dominique Schollaert, a spokesman for the Royal Prosecutor’s Office in Mons, told Stars and Stripes on Monday that the officer “is suspected of having been involved in an attempted murder” but would not provide further details, including the victim’s name.
A local newspaper, La Province, said the victim was the officer’s wife who died in October after falling from the balcony of their apartment in Mons.
When asked if the sailor was under investigation for killing his wife, Schollaert repeated that he was under investigation for attempted murder. He refused to say anything else about the case.
U.S. military officials also would not confirm details of the news report.
Stars and Stripes reporter Slobodan Lekic contributed to this report.
