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Jury finds Dutroux guilty of murder, rape, kidnapping

A Belgian jury yesterday found Marc Dutroux, the country's most hated man, guilty of leading a band of criminals to kidnap and rape six girls and kill four of them.

After three days of deliberations, the chief juror gave the courtroom the jury's answers to 243 questions on the role of Dutroux and three co-defendants in a series of crimes that shocked Belgium nearly eight years ago.

The verdict is the climax to a trial that gripped Belgians for more than three months with details of a dungeon, suspected police complicity, and suggested links to a Satanic cult.

"Finally we will be able to punish these assassins," Jeanine Lejeune, grandmother of one of the victims, told local television as she entered the courthouse before the verdict was read. "This is the day that we will avenge my little girl."

The 47-year old Dutroux, his ex-wife Michelle Martin, 44, Michel Lelievre, 33, and businessman Michel Nihoul, 63, were absent from the courtroom.

The jury failed to return a verdict in the case of Nihoul, who Dutroux alleged was the ringleader of a shadowy pedophile gang.

But Dutroux faces life in jail after being found guilty of the murders of 17-year-old An Marchal and 19-year-old Eefje Lambrecks.

The girls' bodies were unearthed in the summer of 1996 from the garden of a house belonging to Dutroux in the suburbs of the industrial city of Charleroi. Autopsy reports showed that they had been raped and beaten.

Dutroux was also charged with kidnapping two eight-year-olds, Julie Lejeune and Melissa Russo, whose bodies were buried in the garden of another property belonging to him.

They had starved to death and had been repeatedly raped. But the prosecution said it had been unable to determine precisely when they died and so could not press murder charges against Dutroux, who claimed he was in jail for car theft at the time.

The three co-accused were charged with offences including abduction, rape and drug-dealing, and face up to 30 years.

Dutroux claims he has been made the scapegoat for a shadowy pedophile network that included highly-placed individuals. But apart from dropping tantalizing hints during the trial, he has failed to name names.

Sentencing will come after the prosecutor, defense lawyers and the suspects have had a chance to react to the verdict.
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