THE DISAPPEARANCE AND MURDER OF CHILDREN:
AN "AFFAIRE D'ETAT"

(Marc Verwilghen, 20 April 1999)

by Françoise Van de Morteel (*)


Julie and Melissa were abducted in Grâce-Hollogne five years ago.
For one whole year of suffering, their parents were the only ones struggling to find their young daughters in the face of indifference, or even hostility, from the police.

It is already four years since their remains were dug up in Marc Dutroux's garden.

The parents of the victims and all the Belgian people now know, thanks to the work of the parliamentary committee of inquiry and the unremitting efforts of a few investigative journalists, that on 7 July 1995, thirteen days after the abduction, the name of a certain Dutroux, already heavily sentenced for rape offences, was named as the main suspect in a document in the possession of the chief detective of the local police.

THE POLICE HAD BEEN AWARE SINCE 1993 OF DUTROUX'S PLANS TO TURN HIS CELLARS INTO HIDING-PLACES AND TO ABDUCT CHILDREN!

But we still don't know why the young girls were not saved, why the police did not arrest Dutroux!
We don't know why the judicial institutions sacrificed the lives of Julie, Melissa, and also of An and Eefje who were abducted by Dutroux two months later, nor why they would have allowed Sabine and Laetitia and many others to die if it had not been for the unexpected arrival on the scene of the investigation of the magistrates from Neufchâteau, a small public prosecutor's department in the province of Ardennes.

This is the key to the mystery: was the good work done by Bourlet and Connerotte in the investigation into the disappearance of Laetitia in Bertrix the tiny grain of sand that jammed a judiciary machine that had worked for years, whether due to blindness, corruption, blackmail or simply carelessness, in collusion with the abduction of children and of paedophile rings in Belgium? A judicial machine that rapidly got its act back together when it was a matter of covering up its faults and of hushing up the shocking discoveries of the parliamentary committee of inquiry.

In the space of a few weeks, the Bourlet-Connerotte team discovered the bodies of Julie, Melissa, An, Eefje and Loubna, and saved Sabine and Laetitia.
In the space of four years, Langlois has not made the slightest progress: we still know NOTHING about the abduction, the imprisonment, the abuse and the circumstances of the death of the young girls.

Who abducted Julie and Melissa?
Dutroux? His accomplice Weinstein whom he murdered? Someone else? Using what vehicle? And where exactly?
Dutroux denies responsibility for the abduction which his wife Michèle Martin accuses him of...
Investigating Magistrate Langlois did not think it necessary to investigate other trails. Why not?
It was only on the insistence of the parents and their counsel and by judicial order that a reconstruction of the events took place on 27 June 2000.
But this reconstruction, as it was organised by the Investigating Magistrate, was nothing other than a mascarade, extremely painful for the parents: only three "witnesses" out of twenty-five were called by the Magistrate! Among them was Melissa's mother, invited to retrace the path followed in search of the children and the old woman whose testimony is well-known. Carine Russo, moreover, refused to take part.
WHERE were Julie and Melissa imprisoned?
WHERE may they have been taken? Why have there been no checks on reports of the presence of young girls at a den of iniquity in Charleroi?
WHY and FOR WHOM were Julie and Melissa abducted? What was the motive for their imprisonment?
Dutroux is not considered by psychiatrists to be a paedophile. He claims that he abducted Julie and Melissa to bring them up in his family! So why did he abduct An and Eefje two months later, and then Sabine, and then Laetitia, if it is not as he told his accomplices several times "because it's big money"?
Why did he tell his accomplice Lelièvre that the abduction of An and Eefje was an order?
And above all, why does Investigating Magistrate Langlois seem to be completely unaware of these statements, which point repeatedly to the existence of a ring?

HOW AND WHEN did Dutroux's victims die?

Why did Langlois devote so much energy to trying to prove that Dutroux, the friend of Michel Nihoul (who is known to have organised orgies), accused by his ex-wife and accomplice of being at the centre of traffic in pornographic and paedophile video-cassettes, and with a criminal record, is nothing but a "lone predator"?
He failed to carry out the most elementary checks only to claim later that "the inquiry has not been able to prove anything".
In the case of Julie and Melissa, many extremely interesting trails have still not been taken seriously. Considerable resources have been invested in a few very improbable trails, while the most serious trails have not been followed up:
the M. Ferret trail: albums were found at his home with photos of children taken at the holiday camp where he worked as a concierge, in particular photos of Julie and Melissa and a T-shirt belonging to Melissa. This man knew Dutroux.
1. the Feront trail: a very reliable informer who had allowed paedophiles to be found in other cases, and who had claimed to have met a paedophile who showed him photos among which he had recognised Melissa; Magistrate Doutrèwe, head of the investigation into the disappearance of Julie and Melissa, refused to take this trail seriously for a whole year... But strangely she sent a police officer to question Feront when Dutroux's arrest by Magistrate Connerotte was imminent!
2. the Piro trail: on the day after the discovery of the girls' bodies, this bar-owner (some of his bars are on the Philippeville road, where Dutroux has a house) phoned the Lejeune family to tell them that he knew what had happened to the girls, and to tell them that he would be organising a dinner during which he would make important revelations; dozens of witnesses have stated that he confessed the same thing to them; he was murdered shortly afterwards, before he could organise his dinner. His wife was found guilty of a crime of passion! She claims to have paid for the murder of her husband for personal reasons.
3. the Tagliaferro trail: this scrap metal merchant, specialised in the demolition of suspect vehicles, who is proven to have known most of Dutroux's accomplices, was also murdered shortly after the discovery of the bodies of the girls; his wife claims that he was killed because he knew too much about the disappearance of the girls and says that she too was threatened; she was dismissed as being hysterical; shortly afterwards she died at her home in a fire whose circumstances were extremely suspect: the verdict was suicide. The Tagliaferro file was sent to Liège.
4. the Diakostavrianos trail: an accomplice of Dutroux, with whom he had made several journeys to Slovakia to set up a prostitution ring. (A video-cassette was found at Dutroux's home showing the rape of a young Slovakian girl...) "Le Grec's" car might have been used for the abduction of An and Eefje. Diakostavrianos had already appeared in the abduction of Elisabeth Brichet in Namur in 1989. Charged in the Dutroux case, but released in July 1997, he has been found guilty of raping a young mentally-handicapped girl. This file, handled in Namur, was not added to the Dutroux file!

The "lone predator" theory, which was used in Dutroux's defence, and which the magistrate supported publicly in August 1998 (before the start of his investigation into the case of Julie and Melissa which he only began in February 1999...), leads him to shocking contortions in his investigation:
- He asked at a very late date for a report from a nutritionist to establish at all costs, according to Michèle Martin, that two 8-year-old girls could have survived for 106 days (during Dutroux's arrest from 6 December 1995 to 26 March 1996) in a cell measuring 3 square meters, without ventilation or light, feeding on tinned foods whose existence has never been proven and wisely consuming Rhohypnol tablets... It is Dutroux himself who claims to have left these tins in the cell where the young girls were found. But he has often changed his mind about the exact amount of food, and even the largest amount mentioned would not have been sufficient to allow the children to survive... The nutritionist's report lists the many reasons why it seems impossible for the girls to have survived and concludes: "possible but highly improbable". What is Langlois' opinion on the matter (expressed to the Court)? "It is possible."
- Three experts established, with horrific evidence, that the little girls had been subjected to terrible sexual abuse; these three experts had had access to the corpses. Three years later, Langlois found nothing better to do than to ask for a counter-opinion to make sure that the injuries were really caused by sexual abuse! The expert appointed stated that, since he had only had access to photos and videos, it was not possible to say for certain that the sexual injuries were due to rape! Langlois' predictable conclusion: we should allow Dutroux the benefit of the doubt.
- Implicit conclusion: Dutroux imprisoned the young girls for several months without touching them or, as one journalist who some people insist on taking seriously has dared to claim, he intended to entertain them paternally and wait until they grew up before touching them. The same Dutroux who raped numerous minors both before and after the abduction of Julie and Melissa!

Many people have testified before the Neufchâteau investigators about the existence of relations between Nihoul and Dutroux, in the context of orgies, from the 1980s onwards.
Dutroux was not a low-life provincial, as he has been depicted. He frequented swimming-pools, bars and skating rinks in Brussels, where he also met his future wife Michèle Martin. His bank account show sums of money coming in which are inexplicable, except for the fact that they coincide with the deaths and abductions of young girls and children. Why have these facts been kept secret? Why are numerous elements proving the complicity of Nihoul (cf. infra) considered null and void by Magistrate Langlois? Is it to deny the existence of a full-fledged gang of purveyors of children around NIHOUL and Dutroux?

The Nihoul trail had already appeared in a case of the traffic of children before the Dutroux case exploded:
At the end of 1995, a police officer from La Louvière, Christian Dubois, received numerous and reliable complaints - from children, but also from parents and teachers - stating that several people driving a white Mercedes were following children or taking photos of them around schools in Mons, La Louvière, Charleroi, Couvin, Thuin, Chimay, and Beaumont. Dubois investigated and discovered that the Mercedes belonged to the ASCO scrap metal company, founded in 1994 in Onezies near the French border.
ASCO was founded by those closest to Nihoul, his partner, a great friend, the owner of the Dolo - an orgy club - who had been the manager. (The company would move into the car and spare parts trade. Nihoul had been in the car trade since 1989.)
Dubois' informer claimed that ASCO was the cover for a ring trading in children, who were imprisoned for a time in Belgium before being exported to other countries.
When Dubois passed on this information to René Michaux, head of the cowardly Operation Othello when the police were supposed to be watching Dutroux, Michaux did nothing about it, since Dubois' information matched what they already knew from another source: Dutroux had built the hiding-places to imprison children destined to be sent abroad! And he did not think of informing Dubois of this strange "coincidence"!
The "Au nom de la loi" production team (Francophone Belgian TV) which would devote all its efforts to trying to defend the "Dutroux the lone predator" theory and to treating witnesses X as deranged, was already contriving on the basis of statements made by a superintendent from La Louvière to demonstrate that the story of the Mercedes at school entrances was nothing but an unfounded rumour when Julie and Melissa disappeared!
Dutroux was in permanent telephone contact with Nihoul the day before the abduction of Laetitia, the day of the abduction itself, and during the next few days.
Several witnesses saw Dutroux and Nihoul at the swimming-pool where Laetitia was abducted on the day before the events. Among these witnesses is the extremely reliable testimony of a Flemish family who gave a very precise description of Dutroux's van and of Michèle Martin's children's push chair.
During their first interrogations, Dutroux, one of his accomplices, Lelièvre, and Annie Bouty herself recognised at least once that Nihoul was the leader of the gang. "Nihoul will kill me if I speak," said Lelièvre; and in her fourth statement Bouty admitted that Nihoul was the centre of a paedophile cassette ring; from that day on she would never be questioned again! The magistrate responsible told the parliamentary committee of inquiry that he stopped the questioning after receiving death threats...
Just after the abduction of Laetitia, Nihoul gave Lelièvre Ecstasy pills for the sum of 500,000 francs; the explanation provided by the two crooks is that it was the payment for the repair of Nihoul's old car, which wasn't worth more than 50,000 francs, and which in any case was never repaired. At the same time the police seemed to believe Lelièvre when he claimed that he could sell the pills for 20 Belgian francs each, when their normal market value is around 200 francs!
Laetitia heard Dutroux speaking on the phone to a certain "Jean-Michel" (Nihoul's first name)...

Why would Nihoul, who lived in Brussels and claims to have good relations with people, go to Charleroi to get his car repaired?
When and how did he really meet Dutroux for whom he claims to have "valued" a house where Dutroux told him he wanted to open a "club de rencontres"? Was it really by chance, in the summer of 1995, after the abduction of Julie and Melissa? They admit that they saw each other again very quickly to discuss the establishment of a prostitution ring with Slovakia. (see Nihoul's book, pp. 126, 127, 129)
According to Nihoul, Lelièvre (who was introduced to him by the arms and drugs dealer Casper Flier) "turned up at my place once every two weeks" (p. 128) and "Annie Bouty can't stand Dutroux" (p. 134). When they had only crossed paths?
Nihoul was in contact with Diakostavrianos, for whom "he intervened with a magistrate" (p.130).
Nihoul took Dutroux and Weinstein to see Bouty in November 1995 to ask her to provide him with a passport. This episode took place just before Dutroux killed Weinstein...
As an informer of police officer Vanesse (charged by Connerotte and since deceased), Nihoul gave Vanesse orders; Connerotte's team had found two messages addressed to the officer by Nihoul: "Dutroux lorry wait", and "Don't touch Lelièvre"!
Should Nihoul's unexplained links with Dutroux and his entourage not constitute a matter for investigation, and should they not justify keeping him in detention?

Nihoul is at the centre of the testimonies of witnesses "X", victims of paedophile abuse in Belgium.
Regina Louf (XI) gave an exact description of the flat of Annie Bouty, Nihoul's partner during the period when the witness claims to have been raped by Nihoul in the flat: she was able to remember the address.
Regina Louf described the stables where, according to her, orgies with children took place, attended by Nihoul. Checks show that Nihoul owned a horse there at the time of the events described by R. Louf.
The testimonies of other witnesses "X" match that of Regina Louf: not only the same characters, Nihoul, Van der Elst, but also descriptions of the same places and the same practices.
In the inquiry into the Champignonnière murder (1984), two important trails appeared that were not followed up by Investigating Magistrate Van Espen: the two trails lead to Nihoul.
An anonymous caller told the inquirers to go and check out around the Dolo if they wanted to find out what had happened at the Champignonnière. The officer put in charge of the inquiry into the Dolo in 1997 went there himself to take part in orgies!
One trail leads to Radio-Activité, the free radio station where Nihoul worked at the time.

Nihoul, who claims that he has never touched minors, frequented paedophiles.
Nihoul knew several paedophiles including one in Brussels, Corvillain, the owner of a company suspected of being a cover for trade in children and paedophilia videos. He visited Corvillain often, especially after going to see his dentist, whose surgery was in the same building: the dentist was found dead (suicide was said to be the cause of death) right in the middle of the Dutroux case, shortly after stating that Nihoul went to see Corvillain after leaving her surgery; it is still not known that she was the mistress of "X", who was also Bouty's lover, and that she was swindled out of millions of francs.

All the actors and accomplices in the abduction of Julie and Melissa arrested by Connerotte in August 1996 are currently free, with the sole exception of Dutroux, his wife Michèle Martin, and Michel Lelièvre, who has admitted his part in the abduction of An and Eefje...
Michel Van der Elst, the lawyer struck off the bar who provided Nihoul's main alibi for the day of the abduction of Laetitia, retracted a few months ago: Van der Elst had already furnished a false alibi at the time of the "abduction" of the former Prime Minister Van den Boeynants by the Haemers gang and had been taken to prison. (Patrick Haemers appears as a suspect, as well as Nihoul, in the "Tueries du Brabant" case.)
Why doesn't Investigating Magistrate Langlois issue a new arrest warrant against Nihoul, who no longer has an alibi for the preparation of the abduction of Laetitia?
Michel Nihoul shows off on our TV screens and skilfully throws out messages to those who he is able to blackmail.

Why, against the advice of the parliamentary committee of inquiry, have the public prosecutors "trussed up" the Dutroux case?
The dispersion of the files "linked" to the abduction of Julie and Melissa is part of a well-known hush-up strategy.
The file on the "car trade" of Marc Dutroux and his accomplices (Weinstein, Nihoul etc.) should cast light on Dutroux's links with the Charleroi Mafia and may explain the protection or the "consideration" given to him by certain police officers and magistrates suspected by the parliamentary committee of inquiry of having dubious relations with organised crime. This file has been removed from Magistrate Gerard of Neufchâteau and sent to Nivelles (to magistrates overloaded with work). The case of the theft of a lorry in Grâce-Hollogne, the town where the Russo and Lejeune families live, a case in which Dutroux, police officers and former police officers are involved, has been sent to Charleroi!
Dutroux has been charged separately in Charleroi for the imprisonment of three people in November 1995 around this case of the stolen lorry.
The Tagliaferro file has been sent to Liège.
As the chairman of the committee of inquiry has underlined, this obliging "clean-up" by the public prosecutors has made it possible to avoid a real trial of organised crime in Belgium.
The dispersion of the files also hinders the parents of the victims, prevented from asking for access to files that have become "linked", and forces them to become a private party (associating in a court case with a public prosecutor) in each case!
It should be pointed out that in Belgium, while the person under charge has access to all his files, the same is not true for the victims, who have to apply to the investigating judge, who decides in an arbitrary manner which files they can consult and copy (at the scandalous cost of 70 Belgian francs per two-sided page).
Moreover, the defence lawyer of the parents of Julie and Melissa has been refused access to the file on the late Weinstein, murdered by Dutroux, by Magistrate Langlois, "out of respect for the victims and their parents"!

Why did the judicial authorities draw an abrupt halt in 1997 to the verification, which was beginning to be conclusive, of the testimonies of witnesses "X" on the existence of rape, torture, the murder of children and babies, and the shooting of snuff movies at "soirées" organised for the Belgian upper classes? (Michel Nihoul appears here, too...)
Why were De Baets and Bille, who heard these testimonies, abruptly removed from the case, downgraded, charged with malpractice in their inquiries when two years of judicial investigations against them have led only to a dismissal of the case?
Why have the two officers not been reinstated?
Why have officers known to have written false papers in order to damage them not been prosecuted? (A point of detail according to the King's Prosecutor of Brussels...)
Why did three public prosecutor's departments bring their inquiries to a halt at the same time on the very day when one of the main suspects, Tony, admitted to having had sexual relations with Regina Louf at the age of twelve (which is a crime in the eyes of the law) with the agreement of her parents, and to having "lent" her to friends? (On the day of Tony's confessions, 23 April 1998, Dutroux made an attempt to escape which seems to have been encouraged...)
Why was the "re-examination" of the X files, removed from De Baets and Bille and entrusted to another team of officers by Magistrate Langlois, not submitted to the parliamentary committee of inquiry, as was promised several times, before the end of its proceedings?
Why, years later, is this "re-examination" still "unpublishable"?
Why has the inquiry into the testimonies of witnesses "X" not been resumed since no fault was committed by the De Baets team and since there is thus good reason to believe that they are largely credible, even and above all if their accounts are horrific?

Why have other proven teams of investigators been suddenly dismantled or certain members who carry out their work too well removed, intimidated or "promoted" to other tasks? (cf. E. Suys removed from the "Obelix" cell on Nihoul...)
Some officers have been removed from the inquiry into Julie and Melissa without any apparent reason; however much Gino Russo asked to be told these mysterious reasons, he received no reply.

How can the disappearance of parts of the files be explained?
In the inquiry into witnesses "X", a police officer "mislaid" a cassette confiscated at the home of an important suspect. In the inquiry into Regina Louf, another officer "forgot" the whole file on the back seat of his car, which he left for a moment. On his return the file had disappeared. The officer was not punished.
Paul Marchal states that parts of the file on his daughter Eefje have disappeared.
Why were dozens of video cassettes seized at the home of Marc Dutroux on 13 December 1995, which were examined by the police in Brussels from 18 to 30 January 1996, and which according to an operator contained pictures of car-dealing and of pornographic sequences, returned to Dutroux's lawyer on the decision on the Charleroi Investigating Magistrate Lorent? The same magistrate who also returned the speculum seized at the home of Dutroux to the lawyer of Michèle Martin, the speculum which on the advice of the head of inquiry in Grâce-Hollogne Warrant Officer Lesage was voluntarily omitted from the list of items confiscated by officer Michaux during the search...
Why were the five cassettes that remained in the possession of the inquirers, transferred to Neufchâteau after the discovery of the bodies of Julie and Melissa, only registered at the clerk's office of the court on 2 January 1999, two and a half years later, and not examined before that date? Why have the scenes which show Dutroux working in his cellars and the rape of a young girl been cut from the copies made at the Brussels gendarmerie? How can we explain the disappearance of a super-eight tape which a Charleroi police officer confiscated from Dutroux's wife and deposited at the gendarmerie? The Police Investigation Committee came up with only one explanation: "a muddle"!
Why is the MP Anne-Marie Lizon, who stated in September 1996 that recognisable abusers are visible on the other batch of cassettes seized in August 1996 by Magistrate Connerotte, now pretending, with embarrassment, to go back on her statements? What happened to the photos of the rape of Sabine that Dutroux showed Laetitia?
Why did the Brussels public prosecutor's department order the destruction of an important stock of paedophile cassettes seized in the case of the paedophile Raemaeckers, two days before Dutroux's arrest?

Why does the judiciary, political, university and media establishment devote so much energy to treating witnesses "X" as "mad" and to denying the existence of paedophile rings in Belgium, when other cases have already proved their existence, thus becoming the accomplice of a judicial system that does everything to cover up the truth?
There is nothing mad about Regina Louf (XI). She has given dozens of perfectly precise descriptions of places where she was taken, she has recognised her abusers from among the photos that the investigators have shown her. She has recognised other victims.
Why has the press totally ignored the book "Les Dossiers X, ce que la Belgique ne devait pas savoir", which contains proof of the existence of these rings, their members and their protectors.

Why are the 300,000 people whose citizens' action was praised by the media at the time of the protest march now treated by the muzzled press as a "mob" beset by dangerous "emotions"?

WHAT ARE THE NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL RAMIFICATIONS OF THE TRADE IN CHILDREN IN WHICH DUTROUX AND HIS ACCOMPLICES TOOK PART, AND WHY IS INVESTIGATION PROHIBITED? WHAT IS IT THAT THE POLICE ARE AFRAID TO DISCOVER?

The parliamentary committee of inquiry into the disappearance of children, headed by Marc Verwilghen, has given an initial response to these painful questions. In its second report on "protection", it revealed the infiltration of organised crime in the Belgian institutions and its links with political and business circles.

It is significant that the committee was forced to conclude in February 1998, under pressure from the executive and from the political parties, who rapidly turned the page on the protest march. The committee was prevented from proceeding with its task of investigating organised crime in Liège and the strange relations of Warrant Officer Lesage, who did not pursue the suspect Dutroux, with the circles of prostitution and the traffic of human beings.
The former members of the committee were even refused access to their own archives as the result of a vote by their fellow deputies in July 1998!

It is also significant that the constitutional inviolability of the private life of the royal family has for many years been an obstacle to the inquiries into the "ballets roses". Some of the testimonies of witnesses "X" touch the royal family and the perverse influence of Nihoul.
Is this a second explanation of the frenetic attempts to block justice, quite possibly related to the first?


How can we accept that no sanction was taken against the members of the judicial establishment, police officers and magistrates, responsible for mistakes that led to the death of four children?
As was decided by the all-powerful public prosecutors, behind whom the politicians take refuge!
Some of the investigators who played a key role in the cover-up of the case have actually been promoted! For example:
The head of the Central Bureau of Investigation of the Gendarmerie, who failed to circulate Dutroux's name to any of the public prosecutors' departments, has just received the "Politeia" police award, and is now head of the Comiyé P, otherwise known as "la police des polices"!
Inspector G. Zicot of the Charleroi Criminal Investigation Police, charged with complicity in the stolen car trade and indicated by the parliamentary committee of inquiry as one of Dutroux's main "protectors", has been reinstated to the Brussels Criminal Investigation Department...
Warrant Officer Lesage, the head of inquiry who covered up the Dutroux trail was suspended from duty.... for half a day for "having mislaid his police notebook"... ( which must have contained all the information on his investigations...)
Sergeant-Major Michaux, who failed to fulfil his duty to draw up reports on his activities, and also hid extremely important facts from his superiors and from the magistrates, and even drew up false search reports, is currently working in the financial section of the Criminal Investigation Squad of the Brussels Gendarmerie, where he is working on cases involving the Russian Mafia...

Why was Patrick Derochette, charged with the abduction of Loubna Ben Aïssa in 1992 and arrested 6 years after the event thanks to the intervention of the Neufchâteau team, imprisoned without trial in March 1999, on the decision of the Chamber of Indictments of Brussels? (Where the case had been transferred...)
The official story supported by the police is that Derochette acted alone in a state of mental disorder and that he killed Loubna the very day of her abduction. In fact it is thanks to the testimony of a friend of Loubna who recognised her in a car with two people, several days after her abduction, and took note of the number plate, that Magistrate Gérard of Neufchâteau was able to trace Derochette.
All the trails that lead to his entourage: his family, Nihoul, Lelièvre, Dutroux and other paedophiles known to the judicial authorities have also been closed.
In fact the Derochette family frequented the same bars as Nihoul and Dutroux, which filled up at the Derochettes' petrol station. P. Derochette's brother provided him with an alibi that has proved to be false.
Regina Louf recognised Derochette's father among those who raped her.
The evidence of the protection that he and his family received from the local police has been swept aside: the police have knowingly ignored several other vital testimonies. (An attitude justified by "a touch of nonchalance… and of sympathy for this gentle nutcase lost in his alcoholic delirium" Le Soir 24/1/98 …"A gentle nutcase" who had already been imprisoned for only 50 days, for the rape, torture and imprisonment of three young boys in 1986!)
It should be noted that the Brussels public prosecutors' department believed that it would be pointless to open a file on the disappearance of the young girl…

How can we explain the series of suspect deaths around the Dutroux case?
- The "suicide" of the counsel for the prosecution of Liège Hubert Massa, responsible for the file on the murder of André Cools and for the file on Julie and Melissa, buried the day after his death…
- The "suicide" of Superintendent Antipine of the Brussels criminal investigation department, a member of the "Nihoul" team…
- The "suicide" of a gendarme in Grâce-Hollogne, shortly after the disappearance of Julie and Melissa…
- The murder of a bar manager, Piro, who had announced revelations on the case of Julie and Melissa…
- The "suicide" of Tagliaferro, a scrap metal dealer close to Dutroux: it turned out that he had been poisoned with cyanide…
- The "suicide" of his wife Fabienne Jaupart who denounced the murder of her husband…
- The murder of J.P. Taminiaux, a bar porter in Charleroi, close to the stolen car trade circles…
- Houdemont's car "accident" as he was on his way to make revelations to investigating magistrate Coméliau about the abduction of Elisabeth Brichet....
- The "accident" which happened to Gina Beernaer, an employee of a.s.b.l. Morkhoven, a few days after she announced the delivery of snuff-movies (which were never found...) to Georges Gladz, President of the C.ID.E. in Lausanne…
- The "suicide" of Nihoul's dentist…

And the list is not complete.


No date has been fixed for the trial of Dutroux (the latest reports suggest 2002…) whose lawyers now claim, against all evidence, that he is no longer in possession of all his faculties…

The former chairman of the parliamentary committee of inquiry, Marc Verwilghen, elected by an overwhelming majority in the general election of June 1999, is currently Minister of Justice in a new political coalition in which the Christian-Socialist Party is not present for the first time since the war.
We have just learnt, several months late, that he has charged the state prosecutors to reopen the "X" files and to appoint an independent expert.
Attacked every day by his allies in government, in particular by Elio Di Rupo's Socialist Party, and by the upper echelons of the magistrature, who have not forgiven him for having had to account for their actions before the elected members of the nation … and the TV cameras, he is therefore pursuing the line of conduct he has chosen.
He still has the trust of the parents of the victims and of the citizens' movements. But he is very much alone. Having come to power, the Ecolo Party no longer makes the murder of children one of its priorities.

THERE IS A HUSH-UP IN BELGIUM AND CHILDREN CONTINUE TO DISAPPEAR.

The "discovery" of paedophile rings, the testimonies of children abused during Satanic rites broadcast by France 3 and the publication of a CD ROM containing thousands of photos of children by French newspapers has caused the scandal to explode in France.
The Swiss press has followed the movement and the Geneva police have allowed parents to consult its files on abused children, many of whom have been recognised.
The Belgian police had possessed these documents for many months. They decided to do nothing about it. On the other hand the Chairman of A.s.b.l. Morkhoven who had procured them, has been charged with the possession of paedophile materials…
The only hope for reaching the truth in Belgium lies in international action.

(*) journalist, former senior editor of RTBF, member of the Citizens' Committees (Comités blancs)


(1) Michel Bourlet: King's prosecutor;
(2) Jean-Marc Connerotte: investigating magistrate at the time of Dutroux's arrest, relieved of his duties for having attended the famous dinner known as "des spaghettis";
(3) Jacques Langlois:investigating magistrate who took over from Connerotte;
(4) Au nom de la loi: programme broadcast by the RTBF, the Francophone Belgian state TV and radio company;
(5)Annie Bouty: former partner of Nihoul;
(6) XTC: ecstasy.
(7) Dolo: private frequented by numerous suspects.