EUROPE	MARCH 2, 1998 VOL. 151 NO. 9
	The Trials Of A Nation The release of an official report into the kidnap, abuse and murder of young girls fails to put to rest Belgium's worst fears and suspicions By JAMES L. GRAFF /BRUSSELS o meet the often competing demands of Flemish- and French-speaking constituencies, Belgian governments have become deft in the art of compromise. But since the August 1996 arrest of unemployed electrician Marc Dutroux for kidnapping and sexually abusing six girls, four of whom died horrible deaths, Belgians have been wondering whether their state itself is not fatally compromised. The long-awaited release last week of a parliamentary commission's final report on the Dutroux investigation has done little to end the malaise. It concludes that the Dutroux case--in which a convicted child rapist on early release from prison managed to kidnap and abuse girls virtually under the noses of the police--was a tragic systemic failure compounded by breathtaking incompetence and possible corruption. "The whole system is sick," said Marc Verwilghen, the Member of Parliament who chaired the investigation. "It is a typically Belgian cancer." The report left ordinary Belgians disgusted with the abysmal quality of law enforcement. Bolstering this sense of crisis is a rash of other brutal and often gruesome crimes--car-jackings, armed robberies, unsolved serial killings--that have shattered the peaceable image of Belgium. In many cases, there is widespread public suspicion that the police and government were at best inept in solving the crimes and at worst complicit in their perpetration and concealment. By failing to discover evidence of any cover-up in the Dutroux case, the commission's findings have etched yet another fissure into a country already deeply divided by language and culture. "I feel as though we're at a dead end," says Isabelle Capiaux, 34, a bookkeeper at a Brussels pharmacy. "We need to change the way things work." The report was a bitter disappointment to so-called "believers," who are convinced that the investigation into Dutroux's alleged murders intentionally concealed collusion and corruption at the highest political levels. Jean-Denis Lejeune--the father of eight-year-old Julie, who was found buried on Dutroux's property--called for the immediate resignation of the Belgian government. "Nothing in this country happens the way it should," he said. Many Belgians concur. A recent newspaper poll found that more than 65% of those questioned believe Dutroux was protected by police or politicians. Two days before the commission's report was released, 20,000 people marched in Brussels for an end to "the law of silence," which many believe not only thwarted the Dutroux investigation, but was also responsible for a string of unsolved Belgian crimes, beginning with shootings that killed 28 people in supermarket parking lots southeast of Brussels in the early 1980s and including the 1991 murder of Deputy Prime Minister Andre Cools. Following that came the Agusta-Dassault affair, in which high-level Socialist Party officials were alleged to have taken kickbacks from foreign military contractors. In 1995, newly-selected NATO Secretary-General Willy Claes resigned after being implicated in the affair, but many felt the full extent of corruption was never uncovered. "The population already had the feeling that we'd never know the truth," says Francoise van de Moortel, a former television news anchor who has lent her prestige to the popular protest. "Then came the Dutroux case, which was so horrible that people said, 'Enough!'" But having said that, what comes next? Claude Javeau, a sociologist at the Free University of Brussels, says many Belgians felt a sense of "moral panic" after Dutroux's arrest, but don't see a way forward from that emotion to effective political action. Anyone convinced that a massive cover-up occurred is not likely to be swayed by an investigation authorized and steered by parliamentarians. In its report, the commission reveals a grievous dovetailing of a Kafkaesque criminal justice system with feckless and, in some cases, corrupt personnel. It chronicles a litany of missed opportunities. In November 1995, 4 1/2 months after the disappearance of Julie and her best friend eight-year-old Melissa, and at least three months before their deaths, police liberated three young kidnap victims from a property inhabited by Bernard Weinstein, an accomplice whom Dutroux has since admitted murdering. Five weeks later, police heard children's voices in Dutroux's home while they were questioning him about car thefts. But despite Dutroux's conviction on child rape charges in 1989--he was released after three years in prison--they left after a cursory search that failed to uncover the concealed dungeon where the girls were held and later starved to death. By then, grounds for suspicion should have been overwhelming. As the commission showed, Dutroux bragged to a police informant that he could earn $4,000 a time from selling girls abroad. Other testimony suggested that Dutroux enjoyed almost cordial relations with local police, many of whom moved in the same lawless milieu of car thieves and mafiosi. "We discovered protections," says Vincent Decroly, a commission member from the Green Party who withheld his approval of the final report, arguing that it was incomplete. "But none of them appear to have been powerful enough to explain the failure of the investigation." That conclusion offers no solace to the victims' families, nor to the millions of Belgians convinced of high-level government corruption. "There is no question that a very large majority of Belgians have massive doubts about the justice system, and they despair," acknowledges Chris Lecluyse, spokesman for Justice Minister Stefaan De Clerck. None of the magistrates or police officials who bungled the affair have yet received even verbal sanctions. Aside from establishing the commission itself, the government's response to the confidence crisis has been limited to laying out plans for an ambitious reform of the justice system. It calls for judges to be selected on grounds of their competence rather than as a function of their party membership, as is now the case. A new national criminal police entity will be formed with the aim of blunting the harmful competition and enhancing communication between existing parallel commands. But most Belgians are "not interested in seeing these positive new laws," says Lecluyse. "They want to see heads roll." To them, the structural reforms will likely appear to be just another compromise in a country that has already compromised too much. --With Reporting by Catherine Kotschoubey /Brussels
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