Child-sex network behind girls' killings, court told

A man testifying at his own trial for kidnapping, abusing and killing young girls in the mid-1990s, said today he built and wired a secret cell in his basement for the victims on orders of a child-sex network operating in Belgium.

“It was urgent to work quickly because we had to get the girls,” Mark Dutroux told Judge Stephane Goux and a jury of six men and six women in Arlon, Belgium.

“Nihoul wanted the girls,” he said of Michel Nihoul, one of three co-defendants in the trial.

“I did all the electrical work (in the basement cell) myself,” said Dutroux of the dungeon where the prosecution alleges young girls were held hostage and abused.

“I put in three different lights to light up the place really well,” said Dutroux.

He said he was helped in that by Bernard Weinstein, a friend he is accused of killing and whose body was found in a garden behind Dutroux’ home in the central Belgian town of Sars-la-Buissiere on August 17, 1996.

That same day, police also found the bodies of Julie Lejeune and Melissa Russo, both eight, who disappeared on June 24, 1995.

Dutroux entered no plea, which is permissible in Belgium. Belgian law requires defendants to take the stand and answer questions from the judge, but they are not under oath.

The trial focuses on the fate of six girls, randomly kidnapped and abused in a cell behind a custom-built, swing-away door in a cellar in one of Dutroux’ seven decrepit homes. Four died and two were rescued.

Dutroux was allegedly helped by his ex-wife, Michelle Martin, 44, who authorities say sometimes drove the kidnap van, Michel Lelievre, 32, and Nihoul, a 62-year-old Brussels lawyer.

Dutroux, Martin and Lelievre were arrested on August 13, 1996, a week after Laetitia Delhez, then 14, disappeared. Dutroux’ van was spotted near a swimming pool where Laetitia was last seen.

She and another victim, Sabine Dardenne, then 12, were rescued from Dutroux’s cellar on August 15, 1996. Police found the bodies of four girls in two different backyard graves on August 17 and September 3, 1996. Two are believed to have been drugged and buried alive.