Dutroux trial told of depravity
2004-03-02 19:49
Arlon - The trial of Belgian paedophile Marc Dutroux heard on Tuesday a chilling tale of rape and murder of girls as prosecutors for the first time laid bare their case against him.
On the second day of what has been dubbed Belgium's "trial of the century", the court in Arlon heard a chronology of the horrific events that it is claimed led up to the convicted child rapist's arrest in August 1996.
Prosecutor Michel Bourlet, in a sonorous and hypnotic voice, recounted a depressing tale of young lives cut brutally short, of calculated inhumanity, and of sexual depravity.
He also laid bare the lives of the four defendants, detailing how, in his words, their paths crossed to form a sinister junction of crime that led to a garden in an undistinguished village in southern Belgium.
There, in August 1996, police unearthed the bodies of two eight-year-old girls who had been repeatedly raped before they were left to starve to death.
In the garden of another anonymous house, the bodies of two women aged 17 and 19 were found.
Dutroux kept behind bullet-proof glass
According to post-mortem reports quoted in the trial, they had been raped, drugged unconscious and then buried alive.
The properties belonged to Dutroux, whose arrest enabled police to rescue another two girls, aged 12 and 14, from the cellar of yet another house belonging to what the Belgian press calls the "monster of Charleroi".
The 47-year-old Dutroux, following the proceedings from behind bullet-proof glass, appeared impassive as Bourlet presented the prosecution case.
Neither was it possible to discern much emotion from his three co-accused - his wife, a drug-addict friend, who allegedly kidnapped girls in return for heroin, and a businessman whom many suspect was the link to a paedophile gang.
The first day of the long-awaited trial was given over to jury selection.
It received blanket coverage in the Belgian media and worldwide interest from hundreds of journalists who have descended on the small border town.
Photograph of weeping mother
Several Belgian newspapers devoted their front pages to a court artist's depiction of Dutroux slumped with his head on his arms, apparently asleep, as the 12 jurors were being chosen.
La Derniere Heure contrasted the picture of Dutroux with a photograph of a weeping Betty Marchal, the mother of 17-year-old An, whose body was one of the four unearthed from the gardens of Dutroux properties.
The trial has gripped Belgium, reviving the anger and revulsion that swept the country in 1996, as much at the perceived ineptitude of the police and judiciary as at Dutroux himself.
It has also reawakened speculation about the existence of a broader child-sex gang of which Dutroux was just one sordid part.
But, prosecutors say nearly eight years of investigations have failed to dig up evidence of a network of high-ranking officials who protected Dutroux.