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.
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique