Belgian police find bodies of missing schoolgirls

Belgian police today discovered the bodies of two schoolgirls who disappeared almost three weeks ago from a late night street party.

Liege Prosecutor Cedric Visart de Bocarme said Stacy Lemmens, seven, and Nathalie Mahy, 10, had been murdered.

The remains were found hidden in a storm drain among dense undergrowth beside a railway track less than 500 yards from the cafe where they were last seen in the early hours of June 10.

A convicted child rapist, Abdallah Aid Oud, 39, has been charged with the girls’ kidnapping and has been held by police since handing himself in on June 13. He denies any involvement in their disappearance.

Visart de Bocarme said the questioning of Aid Oud had not helped police find the bodies.

Results of autopsies were tomorrow expected to reveal the cause of death.

The girls’ disappearance has shocked Belgium and revived painful memories of the killing spree of child rapist Marc Dutroux 10 years ago. His two youngest victims, school friends Julie Lejeune and Melissa Russo, aged eight, were snatched from a street in Liege and were found dead a year later.

In a statement Elio Di Rupo, premier of the French-speaking Wallonia region, said the discovery of the bodies marked “a new black day for Belgium.” The disappearance sparked a nationwide search and the girls’ pictures were posted in shop and cafe windows around the country.

Crown Prince Philippe, the heir to the Belgian throne, said he was scaling back a trade visit to Moscow as a sign of respect for the girls’ families. “As parents ourselves we want to express our feelings with the parents,” he told reporters in the Russian capital.

Aid Oud was the boyfriend of a waitress in the cafe and police say he was seen in the area shortly before the girls were missed by relatives. He was released in December after serving a second sentence for child-sex offences.