Belgium braced as Dutroux trial begins
Belgium’s public enemy Number One and three co-defendants went on trial today for kidnapping, abusing and killing young girls in a mid-1990s crime spree that shocked the country.
The first day of the trial of Marc Dutroux, 47, his ex-wife and two others was spent selecting 12 jurors amid tight security and intense attention from Belgian and foreign media.
In a letter to the VTM television network, Dutroux said he was part of a criminal network with tentacles in Belgian law enforcement.
He called co-defendant Michel Nihoul, a 62-year-old Brussels lawyer, an underworld lynchpin.
“Of course it happens often that defendants accuse each other,” said court spokesman Nico Snelders.
The trial focuses on six girls, two of them only eight years old, who were randomly kidnapped and abused in a cell behind a custom-built door in a basement in one of Dutroux’s homes.
Four died and two were rescued in a case that showed how shoddy police let a convicted child rapist operate unchecked.
A 1997 parliamentary probe found rival police units hindered the search for Dutroux.
Investigating magistrates have argued over whether he was a loner or part of a paedophilia network.
The ex-electrician was free on parole for abduction and raping young women, including one minor, in the mid-1990s when the kidnappings, alleged rapes and killings took place.
Dutroux allegedly began raping girls as young as eight, helped by his wife, Michelle Martin, 44, who sometimes drove the kidnap van, and two others, Michel Lelievre, 32, and Michel Nihoul, 62.
Hundreds of police deployed in Arlon, a sleepy southern Belgian town where the trial opened in a new, barricaded courthouse where the defendants sat behind bulletproof glass.
During jury selection, the four accused sat silently in the dock. At one point Dutroux seemed to nod off.
“Your client is going to fall asleep,” Judge Goux told Xavier Magnee, one of Dutroux’ three lawyers. Goux apologised to the 180 candidate jurors for the slow selection process. “There are so many of you. This can’t be done as quickly as you like.”
Tomorrow, the prosecution will read out the charges and on Wednesday the defendants will enter their pleas.
Some 500 witnesses will be heard and the trial will probably run until late May.
Dutroux was arrested on August 13, 1996, after a tip-off. Two days later, police found two girls, Sabine Dardenne, 12, and Laetitia Delhez, 14, alive in his cellar.
Again two days later, the bodies of four girls were found in backyard graves: An Marchal and Eefje Lambrecks – kidnapped on the Belgian coast on August 22, 1996, when they were 17 and 18 respectively – and Julie Lejeune and Melissa Russo who were eight when taken on June 24, 1995.
Dutroux is charged with kidnapping these six girls and killing four of them.
He is also charged with killing an accomplice, Bernard Weinstein, whose body was found in a yard next to one of Dutroux’ seven decrepit homes in 1996.
Additionally, he is charged with raping three Slovak girls, also in the mid-1990s.
Dutroux’s ex-wife, Michelle Martin is accused of conspiracy in the kidnappings. Lelievre faces various kidnapping, rape and drugs possession charges and Nihoul faces charges of kidnapping Laetitia Delhez.
The most wrenching part of the Dutroux case is the death of Julie Lejeune and Melissa Russo, the eight year olds who were taken on June 24, 1995.
Police believe they starved to death in Dutroux’s dungeon when he went to jail for four months in December, 1995, for stealing a car.
He told police he asked his wife to feed the girls but that she had not done so.
Paul Marchal, the father of An, who has long been unhappy with police work, said outside the courthouse: “I hope that the trial will bring out more of the truth.”
It has never been established how his daughter and her friend Eefje Lambrecks died. Police believe they may have been drugged and buried alive.
