The Beast of Belgium Marc Dutroux was jailed for life without parole today for a spate of child kidnappings, rapes and murders that horrified the nation and drew international notoriety.

The most hated man in Belgium, paedophile Marc Dutroux, was today convicted of the murder of girls he kidnapped and tortured.

Marc Dutroux, chief defendant in a horrific child rape and murder trial that has transfixed Belgium for over three months, rejected the most serious charges against him today in a final courtroom appeal before a jury decides his fate.

Eliciting gasps of horror in the courtroom, Marc Dutroux took the stand today to describe how he kidnapped and raped young girls in the mid-1990s.