Tracing

Stolen objects | Missing persons | Issuing notices for missing persons

Stolen objects

At the public prosecutor’s request, view days on which the public is invited to look through stolen goods and can possibly claim certain objects are organized on a punctual basis. This also applies to stolen objects retrieved by the railway company NMBS, at the airport or by the Brussels public transport company MIVB, which are transferred to the prosecutor’s office as well. The duration of the conservation of the stolen objects depends on the file and the time that was spent on the matter. This period can vary between six months and thirty years. The magistrate examines the file and then makes one of the following decisions: 1. destruction of the object; 2. restitution to the legitimate owners; 3. transmission to services that are responsible for the sale of these goods.

Missing persons

If you wish to report someone missing, we advise you to address the Local Police as soon as possible. If, however, you do not want to make yourself known, you can send all information directly through our site. In that case, we will inform the competent service. We are only entitled to put the notices for missing persons on our website which we receive from the Issuing of Missing Persons Notices Service (Dienst voor Verspreiding Opsporingsberichten) (DJO) by order of the public prosecutor.

How are the missing persons notices issued?

With respect to putting the missing persons notices online: ‘Issuing missing persons notices to the population’ is the responsibility of the television department of the Federal Police (DGJ-DJO/TV), cf Royal Decree 3 September 2000 art 10.7° and Ministerial Circular 9 November 2000 of the Minister of the Interior and the Minister of Justice. These notices are realized by the television department and issued in different ways to the media and the website www.federalpolice.be. As soon as the person who went missing is tracked down, the television department removes the notice from the website. Still, the magistrate is ultimately responsible for issuing and removing these notices. If he wants the notice to be kept online, for instance in order to discover other evidence, even if the missing person was located, he is empowered to do so. Certain disappearances are exclusively mentioned by Child Focus: The notices on the police websites are only published at the written request of the public prosecution or the examining magistrate who is charged with the case. It concerns support to the audiovisual issuing of a missing persons notice with the aim of localizing the disappeared person. Missing persons notices in the press: The Federal Police entered into a partnership agreement with the VRT/RTBF and één. Where the other media are concerned, these notices are made public by the press agency Belga. These media are free to decide whether they take over the message. In many cases, these notices yield positive results.