BELGIAN police yesterday were investigating an international sex ring in their search for two teenagers believed to have fallen victim to a convicted rapist linked to a macabre case that has horrified the country and rocked the justice system.
As the parents of the missing girls appealed for their release, the Derniere Heure daily said that investigators had evidence of a Belgian paedophile network with links in Germany and the Czech Republic.
The parents of An Marchal and Eeje Lambrechts said that they believed the girls might be still alive. An Marchal's father told Le Soir that "we think there is a good chance they are still alive, even if we have no idea of where they are.
According to Mr Raymond Kendall, Interpol's secretary general, the missing girls could still be alive and "could be exploited in a prostitution network".
Mr Kendall was speaking to the RTL TVI television station. When asked about the sophistication of paedophile rings, he said: "They are very efficient in the sense that, first of all, they make the best use of modern communications, including the Internet, and one of the problems with legislation has been that very often the legislation didn't foresee these technical means of communication and therefore in some countries they are not covered by existing laws."
The two girls disappeared from their homes in August 1995. Marc Dutroux, a convicted paedophile and rapist arrested in Belgium last week in connection with the abduct ion of two other teenagers, has allegedly admitted to holding them, but refused to give any other details of their fate. Mr Dutroux's common law wife, Michelle Martin, has been charged as an accomplice in the kidnapping.
A Belgian court formally charged another person yesterday in the investigation. Jean Michel Nihoul, a Brussels businessman, had been detained on charges of criminal association.
The Brussels daily Le Soir said yesterday that Mr Dutroux and another accomplice arrested with him, Michel Lelievre, were accusing each other of seizing the girls. "I passed them on to my friend," they are both reported to have claimed.
The revelations of death and sex abuse emerged when Mr Dutroux was arrested in connection with the disappearance of two other girls, Laetitia Delhez (14) and Sabine Dardenne (12). After intensive questioning, Mr Dutroux led investigators to one of his numerous homes where the young girls were freed.
But investigators realised that they had stumbled on something much more sinister than a simple abduction, after the remains of two eight year old girls missing since June 1995 were discovered buried at another house owned by Mr Dutroux. The girls, Julie Le Jeune and Melissa Russo, apparently starved to death.
Belgian police yesterday discovered more cells in the basement of another house connected with Marc Dutroux. During a search of the house in the Charleroi suburb of Marchienne au Pont, police found the cells with evidence that they had been occupied by children. The house had been occupied by Michel Lelievre.
. British charities yesterday condemned the growth of child prostitution worldwide and called for tougher measures against sex offenders who abuse young people. A report by Barnardo's said it found a girl of 12 working as a prostitute in Bradford, in northern England.
"Attitudes must change to recognise that young women and girls on the streets are victims of abuse, and not prostitutes. Until this is achieved, no progress will be made," it said.
A Save the Children report said that throughout Asia, Africa, Latin America and the countries of the North, there had been a growth in the number of underage girls and boys involved in commercial sex work.