BELGIAN police investigating the child abduction, rape and murder scandals that have rocked Belgium for the past nine months will visit Ireland for information, the lawyer for the wife of the chief suspect said yesterday.
The lawyer for Ms Michelle Martin, the wife of the convicted child rapist Marc Dutroux, said the visit would be in connection with the disappearance in August 1995 of two teenagers, An Marchal and Eefje Lambrecks. Their bodies were found in September last year, buried on a property connected with Dutroux in the central Belgian city of Charleroi.
Dutroux and an accomplice, Michel Lelievre, allegedly abducted and drugged the two girls as they were hitchhiking back to their holiday lodgings in Ostend. But the two men's car broke down and Dutroux hitched a lift with an Irish couple back to his house in Sars la Buissiere to pick up another vehicle.
Martin, in jail along with Dutroux and two other men connected with the killings, noted the Irish couple's car registration and has given it to police. Dutroux has been charged with murder.
The bodies of two eight year olds, Julie Lejeune and Melissa Russo, who disappeared in June 1995, were found 14 months later in the garden of Dutroux's Sars la Buissiere home.
The body of eight year old Loubna Benaissa, missing since August 1992, was found last month in a local garage. A convicted child molester, Patrick Derochette, has been charged with abduction and rape leading to the death of a minor.