Robert Jan Verbelen

{{short description|Belgian Nazi collaborator}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=January 2025}}

File:Robert Jan Verbelen 1965.jpg

Robert Jan Verbelen (5 April 1911, Herent, Belgium – 28 October 1990, Vienna, Austria) was a Belgian Nazi collaborator. During the last years of World War II, Verbelen was head of the De Vlag Veiligheidscorps, a Nazi SS security force in Belgium. In that function he ordered the assassination of Alexandre Galopin, director of the Société Générale de Belgique, and tried to murder Albert Devèze, Minister of State, Charles Collard-de Sloovere, Attorney General, and Robert de Foy, former State Security director. He was sentenced to death by a Belgian court in 1947 that had found him responsible for the deaths of 101 Belgian resistance fighters.

After the liberation of Belgium during the Second World War, Verbelen fled through Germany to Austria, where he worked for eight years for the Counter Intelligence Corps of the United States Army although he had been convicted as war criminal in Belgium.;[https://www.nytimes.com/1984/01/09/world/new-case-of-nazi-criminal-used-as-spy-by-us-is-under-study.html NEW CASE OF NAZI CRIMINAL USED AS SPY BY U.S. IS UNDER STUDY], Ralph Blumenthal, 9 Jan. 1984, p. A3 He obtained Austrian citizenship in 1959. In 1965, Verbelen was charged with five murders by a court in Austria. However, he was acquitted on all counts.