Belgium mourns murdered schoolgirls
Mourners laid flowers and placed candles, cards and teddy bears today near the spot in Liege where the bodies of two Belgian schoolgirls were found after a three-week search.
Prosecutor Anne Bourguignon said the autopsies on both girls have been completed, but the results may not be released later today as originally expected.
“We don’t want to compromise the investigation,” Bourguignon said.
The parents of the two girls – stepsisters Stacy Lemmens, seven and Nathalie Mahy, 10 – who all visited the morgue earlier today, will be informed of the results of the autopsies first, officials said.
One girl will be buried on Saturday and the other on Monday, officials added.
Police and justice officials confirmed yesterday that the two girls were murdered.
Their bodies were found yesterday in a storm sewer covered by thick undergrowth alongside a railway line running through the gritty eastern steel town.
A court ruled that a suspect in the girls’ killing must remain jailed, despite his lawyers arguing there is no evidence linking him to the girls’ disappearance and killing.
A convicted child rapist, Abdallah Aid Oud, 39, has been charged with the girls’ kidnapping and has been held by police since handing himself in on June 13. He denies any involvement in their disappearance three weeks ago.
The Belgian parliament cancelled its weekly question time session out of respect for the victims, and the classmates of Stacy and Nathalie got a day off from school to help them deal with the shock. A commemorative book for the two girls was covered with photos and white roses.
The killings revived painful memories for Belgians of a similar case. A convicted paedophile, Marc Dutroux snatched two eight-year-olds, Julie Lejeune and Melissa Russo, from a Liege street in 1995, held them for months, before leaving them to starve to death locked in a basement while he served time for a minor offence.
In the light of the killings of Stacy and Nathalie, the European Union’s top justice official urged all member states to step up their fight against paedophilia and child pornography.
He said the European Commission is to adopt a European charter on children’s rights next week, to increase the level of protection.
“I think the whole of Europe has to voice its outrage and horror at the murder of the two children here in Belgium, and we can only hope that the police and judicial inquiries under way will quickly bring the guilty person or persons to justice,” EU Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner Franco Frattini told journalists in Brussels.
