Victims return to Dutroux dungeon

Two victims in the kidnap, rape and murder trial that has shocked Belgium today returned to Marc Dutroux’s home where he held them and two other girls in a dank secret dungeon.

Judges, jurors and the chief suspects accompanied the women to the decrepit house in Marcinelle for a first-hand view of the conditions in which six victims were held, four of them in the hidden basement cell.

Dutroux and two other accused, wearing bullet proof vests, arrived in Mercedes armoured cars.

“It is no pleasure trip. It will weigh heavy on our emotions,” Paul Marchal, the father of the murdered victim An, wrote in his newspaper diary.

“A new confrontation with the place where our child was held will be tough.”

All six victims were taken to the house after they were kidnapped. Four died and two girls were rescued from the basement cell after Dutroux’s arrest in 1996.

Both girls said they want to provide jurors with any information they might request about the secret cell where they were kept.

They will not come face to face with Dutroux in the house, officials said.

Sabine Dardenne, aged 20 now, and Laetitia Delhez, aged 22 now, already testified about living conditions in the cell and alleged abuse at the hands of Dutroux during two emotional days of court hearings, 110 miles away in Arlon, last week.

Dutroux’s run-down row house is in a working class district, south of the capital Brussels.

Some 280 police officers and guard dogs cordoned off the whole area around the house to keep onlookers out.

A helicopter that violated a flight ban over the area was eventually chased away by police, who said a photographer was inside.

Three defendants, including Dutroux and his former wife Michelle Martin, were being held in a green van outside the house.

The fourth defendant, Michel Nihoul, was not fit to travel.

The front door had been removed and replaced by a light brown blanket to make passage into the house easier.

Blue plastic covers were hung on the side of a nearby bridge to block an easy view for drivers and train passengers.

Two eight-year-old victims – Julie Lejeune and Melissa Russo – are thought to have starved to death in Dutroux’s basement in 1996 while he was in jail for car theft.

A police official visited the cellar at the time of their detention but failed to spot the secret cell despite hearing children’s cries.

Two others – Eefje Lambrecks, aged 19, and An Marchal, aged 17 – were also in the house before they were killed in 1996. Their bodies were unearthed from a Dutroux backyard.

Dutroux, a convicted paedophile who was on parole at the time of the abductions in 1995 and 1996, has admitted kidnapping and abusing girls, but claims he was working for a criminal network recruiting prostitutes across Europe.

The investigating judge has rejected the assertion.