Euromedia

Dutroux trial in Belgium

This isn't a directly U.S. related story, but I've seen this mugshot on every single news paper I've visited in the last week. We'll probably see a lot of public protesting while we're in Brussels and it's good to know about how this trial is affecting the public's view of the criminal justice system in Belgium.

After an eight-year-trial delay, Marc Dutroux will finally face charges of kidnapping six young girls and murdering four of them in Belgium. The delay is due to police blunders and investigations into a supposed larger pedophile ring.

The public is very sensitive and critical of the criminal justice system because of the blunders. For example the police allowed Dutroux to escape custody in 1998 and failed to find two of the victims that were in the house they were searching.

The initial arrest of Dutroux in 1996 triggered the White March, Belgium's largest public protest, grieving the loss of the young victims.

There are a two BBC links for the straight news--one about the context of what this trial means and one telling the stories of one of the victims. The last link gives an opinion from a magazine called Expatica for Belgiums living abroad.

Belgium is ready for Dutroux Trial
BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3520819.stm

Belgian kidnap victim tells story
BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2795545.stm

Blind Justice or Blind Eye
Expatica
http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=24&story_id=3597

Belgium is ready for Dutroux Trialhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3520819.stm
Belgium ready for Dutroux trial


Dutroux's trial has been delayed for eight years
Belgian police are mounting a huge security operation as one of the country's most notorious men finally goes on trial in the town of Arlon.
Alleged child-killer Marc Dutroux is accused of kidnapping and abusing six girls aged from eight to 19 in the 1990s and of murdering four of them.

The trial has been delayed for eight years as police investigated claims of a wider paedophile ring.

Perceived police incompetence triggered huge demonstrations in Belgium.

It should be a normal trial, but everybody knows this won't be the case.

Justice Minister Laurette Onkelinx

Justice on trial with Dutroux

Three hundred police officers will guard Arlon's Palace of Justice on the first day of a trial expected to last three months and cost $5.8 million.

They will hope to avoid the humiliation of 1998 when Dutroux succeeded in escaping for three hours after overpowering an officer who was guarding him.

Conspiracy theory

Dutroux will stand trial with his estranged wife, Michelle Martin, 44, businessman Michel Nihoul, 62, and Michel Lelievre, 32, a drug addict alleged to have helped Dutroux kidnap several young girls.

Thousands of Belgians took to the streets in protest

"It should be a normal trial, but everybody knows this won't be the case. You cannot compare it to any other," Justice Minister Laurette Onkelinx told the Associated Press.

All four defendants were arrested in August 1996 by police investigating the abductions of two girls, Sabine Dardenne (then aged 12) and Laetitia Delhez (14).

Both girls were discovered alive two days later in the cellar of a property belonging to Dutroux in the southern town of Charleroi.

Investigators then unearthed the bodies of four other girls who had been missing for more than a year, from the gardens of other Dutroux properties.

They also dug up the body of Bernard Weinstein, an accomplice whom Dutroux has admitted murdering.

Thousands march

Dutroux has accused the Belgian police and justice system of refusing to investigate leads he provided, which he says would prove that he was just part of a wider paedophile conspiracy.

But Belgian officials say that the long delay bringing the case to court partly results from the need to investigate these alleged networks, which they say do not exist.

The government - shaken by the immense scale of public anger at perceived police incompetence - promised changes to the constitution to reduce political interference in the judicial process.

Belgium kidnap victim tells story
BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2795545.stm
One of the victims of the notorious Belgian suspected paedophile Marc Dutroux has for the first time told the horrific story of her kidnapping ordeal.
Sabine Dardenne, then aged 12, was snatched on 28 May 1996, and spent the next 80 days confined to a cellar, where it is alleged she was raped and psychologically abused until her kidnapper was apprehended by police.

Dutroux is yet to stand trial for the rape and murder of four girls, and the rape of two others, including Ms Dardenne, found alive together at one of his properties.

Now 18, Ms Dardenne told several Belgian newspapers she still rereads the letters and journal she wrote during her captivity - "in order not to forget, and to prepare to go through his trial... He must pay."

Chained up

She said she was snatched by Dutroux and an accomplice, Michel Lelievre, while cycling to school, bundled into a van, and lifted inside a house inside a metal trunk.

"He chained me to the bed by my neck," she told Belgian newspapers Le Soir, La Derniere Heure and Vers L'Avenir.

"I stayed there two or three days."

Ms Dardenne said Dutroux later moved her down to the cellar, where he had built a secret compartment equipped with "a mattress and bare light bulb."

"He passed down cans after me - cold tins of meatballs in tomato sauce, and bread that turned green after two or three days."

Although she said she sometimes heard voices outside, she only ever saw Dutroux. He allegedly justified his acts by saying he was protecting her from a worse fate.

Saviour

"According to him, he was saving my life. He was the kind one, he was protecting me against someone who wished me harm and had demanded money from my parents.

"In this way, he was my friend, my saviour."

Delays in bringing Dutroux to trial brought thousands out onto the streets
But when she disobeyed him, Dutroux would threaten to "hand me over to some gang or other he knew... [who] would torture me and kill me after making me suffer."

The teenager said one of his cruellest tricks was to lead her to believe that her parents knew of her whereabouts but had simply abandoned her.

"He said I could write letters. I wrote to my parents. I told them about my day, as if I were on holiday.

"I wished them all the happiness I could. According to him, my parents were mean. I still loved them even so. I just wanted to go home."

Secret symbols

She said she believed Dutroux posted these letters. However, Dutroux would read them and use the information gleaned to pretend he had spoken to her parents and siblings on the phone, reporting back on her pet dog and saying the family had taken out the paddling pool for summer, she said.

Police investigators discovered about 30 such letters under a carpet upon her release.

On a calendar she used to mark the passing of time, she used symbols to denote events: circles for her mother and nurse's days off; crosses on days she saw Dutroux.

Stars denoted "other scenes", her lawyer told Le Soir, alluding to days when she was raped.

Ms Dardenne was later joined by another abductee, 14-year-old Laetitia Delhez.

Days later police freed the pair.

Dutroux, his wife Michele and Mr Lelievre are finally to face trial after years of delay as the police tried to determine the extent of a wider paedophile ring described by Dutroux.

Blind Justice or a Blind Eye?
Expatica
http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=24&story_id=3597

For many Belgians the justice system is a source of shame and embarrassment
A survey published this week by a leading Belgian newspaper found that almost 60 percent of people living in this country have no faith in the criminal justice system.

The study, commissioned by ‘La Libre Belgique’, showed that on average 57 percent of Belgians do not trust the country’s courts and judges. The figure for Brussels region was even higher at 67 percent while in French speaking Wallonia it rose to 70 percent.

In most European countries such findings would be greeted with shock and dismay. Here, however, the most common reaction is likely to be a weary ‘is that all?’

Belgium’s criminal justice system is quite clearly a shambles. Last week saw the end of a 12-year trial into the murder of leading Socialist politician André Cools. Six men were eventually convicted of carrying out the crime. But as this site and much of the Belgian media reported in detail, the trial is likely be remembered as much for its failures as for its final conclusion. After 12 years of inquiries that produced well over 80,000 pages of evidence, investigators were still unable to determine the role of one of the key suspects in the case.

Did Walloon socialist politician Alain Van Der Biest — a former Cools protegé turned political embarrassment — have a hand in the crime? He seemed to have a motive, although he always strenuously denied any connection with the killing. One thing is certain: Van Der Biest himself will never shed any light on the question. He committed suicide two years ago.

But you’d have thought that after such a long and detailed enquiry into such a high-profile affair, Belgium’s top judges could have come up with something a bit more concrete than their final conclusion. Effectively they have said they simply don’t know whether Van Der Biest was involved or not.

If the Cools trial were just a one off case, then perhaps Belgium’s judges and investigating magistrates could be forgiven for having an unlucky break. But it wasn’t — and that’s the whole point. For many Belgians the confusion and bungling that marked much of the Cools case seem par for the course when it comes to solving serious crimes here.

The Marc Dutroux affair revealed monumental levels of police bungling
In the early 1980s for example a gang who became known as the Brabant Killers murdered 28 people in a series of apparently motiveless attacks. The police have been investigating the murders for the best part of 20 years but no one has yet been bought to book for the crimes.

And later this year, in principle on March 1, Belgium’s most notorious suspected child killer should finally stand trail — almost eight years after being captured.

Marc Dutroux was arrested in 1996 and charged with the abduction murder of several young girls including Melissa Russo and Julie Lejeune, whose faces had featured on a country-wide missing persons poster campaign for months previously. His capture revealed a series of monumental blunders on the part of the police. Officers had questioned Dutroux on several occasions without connecting him to a series of child abductions, despite the fact that he already had an earlier conviction for raping five girls.

Curtains on Cools trial

But the most glaring failure came when policemen searched the house where the convicted paedophile was holding Julie and Melissa prisoner — and failed to find the two girls.

The Belgian public reacted with shock and outrage to the case. Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in a protest that became known as the ‘White March’. The Prime Minister of the day, Jean-Luc Dehaene, promised sweeping changes to the justice system — and then nothing happened.

Well, that’s not entirely true. After finally capturing the country’s most wanted man the police very nearly lost him again in 1998 when he briefly escaped from custody.

But, that short dramatic interlude aside, the Dutroux case has essentially foundered in a legal and administrative quagmire since 1996. Trial dates have been pushed back again and again amid more Cools-style investigative bungling, rowing between prosecution and defence lawyers and allegations of top-level cover ups and corruption — never proved, of course.

Justice in Belgium is not so much blind as totally headless
The authorities have now promised a March 1 trail date, but most Belgians seem to be at the point where they will only believe things are moving when Dutroux actually walks into the witness box.

The impression all of these cases give is that justice in Belgium is not so much blind as totally headless.

And until the country puts into practice at all levels some truly fundamental changes to the way it handles criminal investigations, gloomy opinion surveys like the one published this week are set to remain all too common.

Posted by Sophia Tareen at February 29, 2004 07:50 PM