Parliamentarians issue scathing catalogue of police, judicial and political failures

BELGIUM yesterday took the first step towards bridging the gulf between its public and political worlds with the publication of a scathing 300-page report on the mishandling of the inquiries into child abductions and killings.

Pulling no punches on breathtaking failures of communication and initiative, and on the individual responsibilities of some 30 police and judicial investigators, the parliamentary report also sets out plans for major reforms of the criminal justice system. Foremost among these are the integration of the country's three separate police forces, which are bitterly criticised for their failures to communicate with each other.

The report exposes the "competition" between the gendarmerie and other services and the former's wilful refusal to submit to judicial supervision. Inter-institutional rivalry is matched, the report says, by personal rivalry and bitterness within services.

Not that the prosecution service or the judges escape scot-free the deputies call for a full audit of the judiciary system and a massive extension of training of judges throughout their careers.

Prosecutors are criticised for failing to communicate with colleagues working on the same investigations. And, sensitive to the widespread anger at the highhandedness of officials in their dealings with the families of the disappeared, the report recommends putting the rights of victims in their dealings with the authorities on a new footing.

It is a hefty and probably costly agenda of reform, but the government will find it very difficult to resist. However, the committee in its report, which will be debated by parliament tomorrow and Friday, does not come to any definitive conclusions on whether there was active "protection" of paedophiles. This will be considered in further hearings.

In presenting the report to deputies one of the committee's rapporteurs, Mr Renaat Landuyt gave a strong hint that he believed there were "signs of protection." There were bizarre failings, he said, that were simply not explainable in terms of incompetence or systemic failures.

The report highlights the failings of many officials who now may lace disciplinary charges. "I want those who are not worthy of doing their job to be punished," Mr Jean-Denis Lejeune, father of Julie (8), told Belgian public television. "It is clear that there are people in the police force or in the gendarmes who are not worthy of being there."

Mr Landuyt made clear that "we reject fatalism and demand responsibility," acknowledging the politicians themselves must accept some responsibility.

Perhaps the most withering individual criticism is levelled at the chief prosecutor of Brussels whose service is described as a shambles. "Mr Dejemeppe does not fulfil the requirements to direct his team," the report says, arguing that his plea in mitigation that he trusted his subordinates did not absolve him from responsibility. One newspaper has already called for his sacking.

The police officer in charge of the Charleroi investigation into Dutroux, Mr Rene Michaux, comes in for severe criticism for failing to conduct his inquiries systematically or follow up on important leads, as do his superiors for completely failing to supervise his work. The Ministry of Justice and the instructing judge in charge of one of the key investigations, Ms Martine Doutrewe, are criticised for failing to act on the Minister's offer to find extra resources.

The report, which goes backs over the release of Dutroux from prison three years into a 13-year sentence, also condemns the then Minister for Justice, Mr Melchior Wathelet, now a judge in the European Court of Human Rights, for failing to ensure that the system of early releases was not copper-fastened by adequate supervision of those released.

Dutroux was unsupervised for a full six months.

The 15 deputies say that if police had acted on the information they received from an informer in 1993 that Dutroux wash building rooms off his cellar to hide kidnapped children, the kidnappings could have been prevented. Later disregarded information could have led to their rescue alive. Instead, four were to die.

The report also deplores the failure of local Brussels police to take seriously the disappearance in 1992 of Loubna Benaissa. They refused to use dogs to search for her because the dog handlers were on holiday.

Victims and their families should be given a whole new standing, the report urges. Missing persons reports should automatically get urgent status; 24-hour missing persons bureaux should be established; police and judges should be trained to consider the distress of victims' families; and victims' families should have access by right to lawyers and to files and information about how investigations are proceeding.

The most far-reaching institutional changes proposed are those concerning the three police forces - the gendarmerie, the judicial police, and the communal police - whose overlapping mandates and local fiefdoms undermined the investigations.