Dutroux faces Belgian court
Belgium’s public enemy number one and three accomplices, including his ex-wife, were going on trial today for kidnapping, abusing and killing young girls in a revolting 1990s crime spree that shocked the country.
Marc Dutroux, 47, and his co-defendants were facing a jury trial amid extraordinary security, eight years after Belgians learned how, in 1995 and 1996, six young girls were randomly kidnapped and abused in his cellar behind a custom-built door.
Four died and two were rescued in a case that became a textbook example of how shoddy police work let a convicted child rapist operate unchecked and a snail-like court system then worsened the pain of the victims’ parents.
A parliamentary probe found rival police units hindered the search for Dutroux. Investigating magistrates delayed his trial by endlessly bickering over whether he was a loner or part of a paedophile network – and one was removed from the case for attending a benefit event for the victims’ families.
Exaggerating the justice system ineptness was Dutroux’ escape on April 23, 1998, when he grabbed a police guard’s gun. He was arrested three hours later without incident…police knew the officer’s gun had no bullets.
Former electrician Dutroux was on parole for the abduction and rape of minors in the mid-1980s when the kidnappings, alleged rapes and killings took place.
The prosecution says he began raping girls as young eight, helped by his wife, Michelle Martin, who sometimes drove the kidnap van, and two others, Michel Lelievre and Michel Nihoul.
More than 300 police officers have been deployed in Arlon, where the trial is taking place, at a brand new – and barricaded – courthouse in the town centre.
Dutroux and his co-defendants will be seated in a box behind bulletproof glass.
The trial before Judge Stefane Goux was opening at 10am with the selection of a 12-member jury and 12 alternate jurors. Tomorrow will be spent on a reading of the charges and on Wednesday the defendants will probably enter their pleas, officials said.
The trial, which will hear about 500 witnesses, will probably run until May 20. The case file stretches across 450,000 pages.
Dutroux is charged with three murders but is expected to plead guilty to only one – that of an accomplice, Bernard Weinstein, whose body was found in a yard next to one of Dutroux’ seven decrepit homes in 1996.
He is also expected to plead guilty to kidnapping Sabine Dardenne (then 12) and Laetitia Delhez (then 14) in May and August, 1996, respectively and An Marchal (then 17) and Eefje Lambrecks (then 18) on August 22, 1996.
Ex-wife Martin, 45, is accused of conspiracy in the kidnappings.
Michel Lelievre, 32, faces various kidnapping, rape and drugs possession charges and Michel Nihoul, 62, faces charges of kidnapping Laetitia Delhez.
No murder charges are filed in connection with the deaths of two other young girls – Julie Lejeune and Melissa Russo, both eight, when they were taken on June 24, 1995. They starved to death in Dutroux’s basement dungeon.
Dutroux’s lawyer Xavier Magnee said he hoped his client would get a fair hearing. “With all the information printed in the press already, its hard to see how we can find an impartial jury,” he said.
Prosecutors say all the girls were taken to a house in Marcinelle, 37 miles south of Brussels, where they were believed to have been drugged and raped.
The house belonged to Dutroux, then a 39-year-old unemployed electrician and car thief, who had already been in prison for raping five girls in the mid-1980s.
On August 13, 1996, he was arrested on a tip-off and police found Sabine Dardenne and Laetitia Delhez alive in his cellar. The bodies of four girls were found in back garden graves soon afterwards. Two of them are believed to have been drugged and buried alive.
