Mick Hartley

The trial of the century, they’re calling it in Belgium.

Dutroux, standing throughout, addressed the court with chilling self-assurance in the rolling guttural French of his native Wallonia. Throughout he conveyed a strong sense that he was a victim of an uncomprehending society, from the parents who did not love him to the police and judicial system that is trying him nearly eight years after his crimes.

It was hard to avoid the impression that he was enjoying the limelight. He seemed to relish describing the DIY skills that helped him construct what he boasted was an “undetectable” cell in an old water cistern under his house at Marcinelle, near Charleroi.

Members of the public gasped in horror as he related explicit details about his victims, including how eight-year old Julie Lejeune and Melissa Russo had been sexually abused before starving to death in the dungeon.

Dutroux betrayed no emotion as he described how he returned from a prison sentence to find the children dead and put their emaciated bodies in the family freezer before burying them in bin bags in his back garden. Even the journalists flinched.

Yet he and his three lawyers are vigorous in defending his interests: prisoners in Belgium have a right to privacy and three photographers whose publications used his picture have been banned from court. Many newspapers have complied by showing him only with a black band over his eyes.

As lawyers had predicted, Dutroux’s strategy is to blame others for the crimes he is charged with, portraying himself as a pawn in a larger, even murkier game.

He muddied the waters by making tantalising new accusations and changing the story he gave when he was arrested in August 1996. He claimed, for example, that two unnamed policemen had taken part in the kidnapping of teenagers An Marchal and Eefje Lambrecks near Ostend. They are said to have been raped, drugged and buried alive. […]

But the big question is whether the whole truth will ever emerge, especially whether a wider “network” of establishment figures was involved.

Expectations are frankly low. “For the truth to come out you need names, the other names,” argued Brussels engineer Jose Gazeau. “And that’s not going to happen. The whole thing is just too politicised.”

And, if the crimes themselves are one half of a stomach-churning tale, the other is the shameful catalogue of official bungling, turf wars, buck-passing and perhaps worse that allowed them to go undetected and unpunished for so long.

As someone with family connections in Belgium, I can vouch for the corrosive cynicism which is felt for the whole business. The general feeling seems to be that, because the investigation has been so incompetent, and so prolonged, there must be bigger fish involved. This of course may be true, but officials can be incompetent without being corrupt. It’s tempting to blame the cynicism as a natural reaction in a society where the state is expected to provide all the answers. In the circumstances it’s clear that Dutroux will play up to this cynicism. He could name all the senior officers in the Liege police force as accomplices and half of Belgium would believe him.