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Dutroux 'did not act alone'
25/05/2004 15:30 - (SA)
Arlon, Belgium - Lawyers for a surviving victim of Belgian child rapist Marc Dutroux on Tuesday dismissed arguments that he acted alone, suggesting that "other truths" were behind the case.
Laetitia Delhez, who was 14 at the time of her abduction in August 1996, looked pale standing next to her attorney as he set out his closing arguments in the three-month-old trial of Dutroux, which is set to end next month.
"The answers given by the investigation to Laetitia's questions are not satisfactory" Georges-Henri Beauthier, one of the 22-year-old's two lawyers, told the court in the Belgian town of Arlon.
Dutroux is charged with the abduction and rape of six girls and the murder of two of them in the mid-1990s. While he has confessed to some of the kidnappings and rapes, Dutroux denies murder.
The case rocked Belgium and shocked the world, all the more so amid allegations that the former electrician could have been part of a wider paedophile network.
But the network allegations have not been supported by evidence offered by prosecutors during the trial, which began in March and is expected to draw to a close in mid-June.
Beauthier criticised the investigating magistrate for ignoring any leads which did not fit with his "theory" that Dutroux had acted practically alone, saying his client was not happy with his probe.
"Why me? What was the reason? Would I have the same fate as An, Eefje, Julie and Melissa? These are the questions which Laetitia has been asking herself for eight years. The answers are not satisfactory" he said, referring to the four girls who died.
"We have to put the puzzle back together to create a plausible version" he added.
Dutroux, already convicted in 1989 over a string of child abductions and rapes in the mid-1980s, served just three years of a 13-year sentence. He faces life imprisonment if convicted again.
- AFP
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