Journalist detects Irish link in Dutroux case

THE family of one of two girls abducted and almost certainly killed by Marc Dutroux of Belgium have appealed to two young Irishmen to make contact following information that they innocently gave Dutroux a lift on the night of the abduction.

The men, understood to have, been identified and questioned by gardai some time a go, are believed to be from Cork.

The Irish connection and a picture of the hours and days surrounding the abduction has emerged from the researches of a Flemish journalist, Fred van den Busche of Het Volk, based on discussions with police questioning Dutroux and his accomplices.

The abducted girls, An Marchal (17) and Eeje Lambrechts (19), had travelled to Ostende on the northwest coast from their home town Hasselt in eastern Flanders as part of a theatre group on August 22nd, 1995.

Late in the evening while waiting for a bus to take them to the place they were staying, they were drugged and put into the boot of his Citroen by Marc Dutroux and an accomplice, Michel Lelievre.

On the motorway to Brussels the car broke down near the town of Ternat and, having bundled the still drugged girls into a ditch, Dutroux left Lelievre to find a garage.

He is understood to have told the police that in a car park at about 1 a.m. he saw a car with, two young Irishmen asleep inside. He offered them £20 to drive him home to his wife, Michelle Martin, at Sars la Buissiere, south of the city of Charleroi.

Having done so the two men spent some hours asleep in the house while Dutroux returned to fetch his car, Lelievre and the drugged iris. The Irishmen never saw him again.

Police believe the girls were taken back to Dutroux's home in Marcinelle nearby, where they may well have seen two other victims, Julie Lejeune and Melissa Russo, eight year olds abducted in June and who would live in captivity in a tiny cell off the basement, subject to regular abuse, until March the following year when they died of starvation and neglect.

An and Eefje did not survive as long. Dutroux, according to police sources, was frustrated when his son could not play with the games on the computer in the room on the first floor of the house where he had imprisoned the girls. Within 10 days or two weeks he decided to give them to another paedophile, Bernard Weinstein.

How they died is still disputed by Dutroux who blames Weinstein but admits the abduction. The girls bodies were not discovered in Weinstein's Jumet house until September 1996.

Weinstein was murdered by Dutroux in November 1995 when the latter suspected a doublecross. He was drugged and buried alive.

Dutroux, Lelievre, Martin, and others are today in jail facing at least five murder and conspiracy charges.

Yesterday the parents of An, Paul and Betty Marchal, said that they had only just heard of the Irish connection and would welcome the opportunity to talk to the Irishmen about Dutroux's demeanour on the night their daughter was abducted.

Mr Marchal has been one of the key figures in the campaign by the families to highlight the incompetence and inertia of police and authorities in the hunt for Dutroux.