Who's who in Dutroux trial
2004-06-17 13:42
Arlon, Belgium - Marc Dutroux, his ex-wife and two alleged accomplices were to hear their fate on Thursday at their trial for a series of abductions, rapes and murders of young girls in the mid-1990s.
Here are brief details of the four people on trial in the town of Arlon, near the Luxembourg border in southeast Belgium:
MARC DUTROUX: Age 47, Dutroux was a jobless electrician surviving, it is alleged, on the lucrative proceeds of drug-dealing and trading in stolen cars.
He had a string of convictions for petty crimes before he was arrested, together with his future second wife, in February 1986 for the abductions and rape of five girls.
He was convicted and jailed in 1989 for 13 years, but released three years later under a government scheme that was supposed to monitor sexual offenders in the community.
He was re-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: Julie Lejeune, 8, Melissa Russo, 8, An Marchal, 17, and Eefje Lambrecks, 19.
They also dug up the body of Bernard Weinstein, a murdered accomplice who, according to Dutroux, let Julie and Melissa starve to death while Dutroux was imprisoned in February and March 1996 for car theft.
Dutroux is charged with murder, rape, kidnapping (including of three Slovakian girls), violent car theft and drug-dealing. He faces life in prison.
MICHEL NIHOUL: The 63-year-old property surveyor, a fraudster first convicted in 1968, holds the key to the theory that Dutroux was only one part of a paedophile network.
Nihoul is reported to have procured girls for drug-fuelled sex orgies attended by government, police and judicial officials.
Laetitia Delhez has told investigators that during her week-long confinement, she heard Dutroux speaking by telephone several times to a "Michel" or "Jean-Michel" (another name used by Nihoul) about her abduction.
Nihoul, who denies charges of kidnapping and drug-dealing, says that the phone calls were about repairs on his Audi car being carried out by a friend of Dutroux.
But prosecutors say that during this period, Nihoul delivered a thousand ecstasy pills to Dutroux's friend, Michel Lelievre, allegedly as payment for his role in the kidnapping operation
MICHELLE MARTIN: Dutroux's divorced wife, aged 44, is a former teacher who became his mistress in 1980 while he was still married to his first wife.
As with a string of other women whom Dutroux is said to have had affairs with, the pair met on an ice-rink.
Martin is described by her former colleagues and pupils as timid and easily dominated. Press reports say she was regularly beaten by Dutroux.
She was arrested with Dutroux in February 1986 for the abductions and rape of five girls. The pair, still in detention, married in 1988. She was convicted and jailed in 1989 for five years, and served two.
Martin faces charges of kidnap and complicity in the murders of the four girls, as well as taking part in the rape of a Slovakian girl allegedly abducted by Dutroux.
MICHEL LELIEVRE: A heroin-addict friend of Dutroux, Lelievre, 33, is accused of helping to kidnap the girls in return for drugs.
He grew up in a foster home and had frequent brushes with the law. He is accused also of trading in stolen cars with Dutroux and Nihoul.