Heavyweight kickboxer Jamal Ben Saddik was sentenced to 4 years in jail on December 9, 2025, by an Antwerp prison court docket for his management function within the kidnapping of a dockworker. The court discovered the 34-year-old fighter to be the “driving drive” behind the July 2024 abduction, which prosecutors linked to a failed drug extraction operation on the Port of Antwerp. This verdict marks the second main prison conviction for the GLORY heavyweight in lower than six months, following a cash laundering sentence handed down in June.
Jamal Ben Saddik’s Team Responds to Four-Year Sentence, Claims “Framing” in Kidnapping Case
Ben Saddik’s legal team immediately rejected the ruling, announcing plans to appeal the decision. In a statement released shortly after the verdict, with Vechtsportinfo, the kickboxer expressed disbelief on the end result, describing the conviction as a miscarriage of justice primarily based on inadequate proof.
“I’m extraordinarily shocked and disenchanted by the court docket’s ruling,” Ben Saddik acknowledged by way of his spokesperson. “I’ve been convicted on the premise of a single assertion with none supporting proof. I’m harmless and am being framed in a means that doesn’t replicate who I’m.” His protection legal professional argues that the court docket’s evaluation of Ben Saddik because the chief of the operation is “utterly unjustified” and depends too closely on the testimony of the sufferer with out corroborating forensic proof.
The fees stem from an incident on July 1, 2024, involving a dockworker who had allegedly accepted an advance cost to retrieve a cocaine cargo however failed to finish the duty. The court docket decided that Ben Saddik and two accomplices assaulted the person on the road earlier than forcing him right into a car at gunpoint. Through the abduction, the sufferer was reportedly threatened and informed to cooperate whereas his house was searched by different members of the group. The kidnapping ended solely after the sufferer’s sister contacted the police, prompting his launch. The court docket sentenced the sufferer’s uncle, who phoned the dockworker in the course of the abduction to induce compliance, to 30 months in jail.
This sentencing adds to a compounding series of legal struggles for the Belgian-Moroccan fighter. In June 2025, the Antwerp Court of Appeal sentenced Ben Saddik to 40 months in prison (20 months suspended) for money laundering and fraud involving over €1.2 million. That case, which also implicated his brother, involved the use of falsified employment contracts and real estate transactions to obscure criminal funds. Additionally, Ben Saddik was previously detained in 2021 during “Operation Sky,” a major police investigation into the sale of encrypted cryptographic phones to criminal organizations.
The conviction places Ben Saddik’s professional future in severe jeopardy at a time when the heavyweight division is undergoing significant changes. GLORY Kickboxing had already suspended him in May 2024 following an altercation in the ring, and his repeated legal issues, including doping violations in 2015 and 2022, have likely permanently severed his standing with the promotion.
