Serial killer disrupts court hearing

Serial killer Michel Fourniret went on trial for seven murders today and immediately tried to manipulate the court proceedings.

The 65-year-old "Ogre of the Ardennes" took his place in the dock in the French town of Charleville-Meziers beside his wife Monique Olivier who is suspected of helping him lure his young female victims to their deaths.

When asked to identify himself however, Fourniret refused to speak and instead demanded the hearing be held in secret by holding up a sign which read: "Without a closed courtroom, staying tightlipped".

Fourniret is charged with kidnapping, rape and murder in the crimes committed in France and Belgium between 1987 and 2003. The victims, aged from 12 to 21, were strangled, shot or stabbed with a screwdriver.

He is also suspected of many other murders, including that of British student Joanne Parrish in Auxerre in 1980.

The trial is one of the biggest serial killing cases ever held in France, and drew comparisons with Belgium's notorious paedophile Marc Dutroux, sentenced to life in prison in 2004 for a series of child kidnappings, rapes and murders.

Fourniret also passed to the judge a rolled paper tied in a red ribbon, which his lawyer said was a message to the victims' families. He asked that the judge read it, and the judge declined.

Defence lawyer Pierre Blocquaux also told the court Fourniret did not want to be defended by him or his two other lawyers.

Olivier appeared to be co-operating and answered the judge's opening questions about her identity. Her lawyers as saying she planned to apologise to the victims' families.

Olivier looked for a long time at the families and did not react as crowds of photographers snapped her image as she entered.

Fourniret was captured in Belgium in June 2003 after the bungled kidnapping of a 13-year-old girl who took down his number plate number after she managed to escape from the back of Fourniret's van.

Belgium extradited Olivier to France in 2005 and Fourniret in 2006. Judicial officials in both countries decided the case should be tried in France because six of victims were French citizens.

Jean-Maurice Arnould lawyer for the family of one of the victims, 12-year-old Elisabeth Brichet, said the family was not expecting an apology from Fourniret.

"He's a man without conscience," he said.

Elisabeth's father said he did not want to hear Fourniret's account of his daughter's murder.

"We don't want new facts of the crimes; for us it's already hardly bearable," Francis Brichet said.

His daughter's body was found along with that of 21-year-old Jeanne-Marie Desramault in the wooded grounds of Fourniret's former property in northern France.

An array of exhibits sat in the courtroom including a shotgun, two revolvers, a screwdriver and various pieces of rope.