A man sentenced to life imprisonment in Belgium for killing four women and severely injuring two other people was released after he was handed over to the Turkish authorities to serve the rest of his term, BBC Turkish reported.

The man named Osman Çallı was found guilty of murdering his 25-year-old wife Teslime and his 19-year-old sister Hacer, pregnant at the time, on 11 November 2004 in the city of Ghent in Belgium, and of subsequently murdering his ex-wife and his ex-mother-in-law in the city of Aalst.

He reportedly killed Teslime and Hacer by tying them up and shooting them, then burned their bodies. In the next incident, he also severely injured a man who was staying in the house of his ex-wife. He then carjacked a vehicle for his trip back to Ghent and held the female driver of the vehicle hostage at gun point. Çallı then stormed the house of a man he suspected of having an affair with his wife, severely injuring the man named Biçer Erbil.

Çallı was eventually captured and faced court. He was sentenced to multiple life imprisonments at the end of the trials that went on for four years. He appealed to the Belgian authorities as he was serving his term, to be handed over to Turkey, and his appeal was granted. He was sent to Turkey on 28 June in 2013.

It has been recently revealed that Çallı was kept in prison only for a further three years when he arrived in Turkey, and was granted partial freedom of movement outside prison in September 2016, was released on probation in November 2019, and was fully released in 2020.

Çallı, currently 63, told a reporter of the Belgian VTM news channel on the phone: “I’m enjoying the sun, the sea and the beaches here. I served my time in prison and began a new life. I’ll have a son very soon. I just want to be left alone.”

Christoph D’Haese, the lawyer of Henri de Cooman, the Belgian man who Çallı shot, said it was ‘shameful and incomprehensible’ that Çallı was walking freely instead of serving his term in Belgium.

The Belgian ministry of justice said: “We have no official information about the case of Çallı. We requested information from Turkish authorities and we are waiting for a response.”