
2 6 April 2017
The Marc
Dutroux
scandal
The chilling Belgium case
of Marc Dutroux is relevant
to this discussion. Dutroux
kidnapped, imprisoned, raped,
tortured and let young girls starve
to death. He served three years of a
thirteen-year sentence for rape. After his aston-
ishingly early release, he was provided with an
income from the state. Back on the outside, he
built a secret room at one of his seven proper-
ties. He videotaped its construction to show
others in his network how it could be replicated.
After two shocking kidnappings, the police
searched his property. A civilian locksmith who
accompanied them could hear the cries of the
two eight-year-old girls who were trapped in the
secret compartment only feet away from them,
yet the police insisted on abandoning the search.
They also took Dutroux’s videotape but never
watched it, allegedly because they didn’t have
access to a video player. The girls starved to
death.
Police cameras monitored Dutroux’s property
but detected nothing because they were
switched off at 6 pm each night. Dutroux became
overconfident and was eventually caught crawl-
ing around the streets of Belgium in his white
van acting suspiciously. After his arrest, he
revealed that he was part of a paedophile net-
work which enjoyed high-level protection.
One of the victims of his network later
emerged to reveal she had been taken to parties
where men, including an official who had been
pivotal in securing Dutroux’s early release from
prison, had abused her. Dutroux was also pre
-
sent at some of the parties. She revealed that
videotapes were made of a number of them.
Rudy Hoskens, a detective who attempted to
pursue her claims, was suddenly yanked off the
case. The team that replaced him altered her
statement and those of other witnesses.
Jean-Marc Connerotte was appointed as the
investigating magistrate of the Dutroux case.
Connerotte’s integrity was beyond question: he
had rescued two of Dutroux’s
kidnap victims. In January
1996 he wrote to the King of
Belgium complaining that
his investigation into the
network he suspected
revolved around Dutroux
was being blocked because
the suspects “apparently
enjoyed serious protection”. He
pressed ahead until November 1996
when he was dismissed on spurious grounds.
There was outrage. On 20 October 1996 the two
survivors he had saved and 300,000 others
marched through Brussels, many dressed in
white and carrying white balloons, in protest.
Connerotte was replaced by a magistrate who
had never carried out an investigation before
who failed to find any evidence of a wider
network.
Officially, the Belgian government denied -
and continues to deny - that Dutroux was part of
a network. Aside from some small fry such as his
wife and driver, no one else has been
convicted.
Twenty witnesses associated with the Dutroux
case died in mysterious circumstances: one was
crushed under a train, another was poisoned,
another perished in a suspicious road traffic
accident, another disappeared with his foot
turning up in a canal later.
There is no reason to doubt Dutroux’s claims
that he supplied children to a paedophile net-
work with high-level protection. The likely
explanation for this is that the Belgian officials
involved in the cover-up were dancing to the tune
of MI6 and the CIA who were prepared to descend
to any depth during the Cold War to advance
their interests. Brussels has provided fertile
ground for all sorts of sexual blackmail for dec-
ades, not just that of paedophiles. Prostitution
is legalised and its brothels are frequented by
all sorts of EU and non-EU politicians and dip
-
lomats. In addition, Brussels
attracts military officers
from NATO and non-
NATO armies alike as it
is the capital of NATO.
Sinister hush-hush
briefings
As the Archbishop Makarios blackmail case
(described in Village in January) demonstrates,
MI6 was prepared to hold its blackmail cards up
its sleeves until it had no choice but to play
them. Makarios was not strong-armed until the
eleventh hour after he refused to sign the Cyprus
Agreement which Britain was promoting.
An off-the-record press briefing which took
place shortly before the signing of another
important settlement, the Anglo-Irish Agree
-
ment at Hillsborough on 15 November, 1985,
illustrates yet another variation of Britain’s
blackmail tune: pressure can be applied indi
-
rectly and from a distance.
The British Establishment, especially the For
-
eign Office, wanted Hillsborough to succeed.
The last thing it wanted was a repeat of the
Ulster Workers Council strike which toppled the
NI Power-Sharing Government a decade earlier.
In early November 1985, Lobby Correspondents
in London received an unattributable briefing
from Thatcher’s press office allegedly revealing
she had ordered the Ministry of Defence to open
a fresh inquiry into Kincora. This may have been
intended to chill a number of the protagonists.
For example James Molyneaux, the leader
of the then dominant Ulster Unionist
Party (UUP), may have had an interest
in concealing a friendship with Wil-
liam McGrath of Kincora.
Another key figure who must have
been concerned was Molyneaux’s
guru, Enoch Powell, a Tory MP 1950–
74 (infamous for his 1968 ‘rivers of
blood’ anti-immigration speech).
Powell had become a Ulster Unionist
Party MP in 1974. After he died in 1998, his
friend Canon Eric James, a former chaplain at
Trinity College, Cambridge, and Chaplain
Extraordinary to the Queen, revealed that Powell
had confided in him ten years earlier that he had
engaged in a homosexual relationship as a
young man. Powell gave him a copy of a collec-
tion of his poems called 'First Poems' (1937). He
NEWS
9
8
It was about
gaining control
over politicians to
get them to do the bidding
of right-wing cabals. These
operions were smll
cog in mssive pro-NATO
mchine which opered
during he Cold Wr.
Marc Dutroux
One of Marc Dutroux's rescued victims White Balloon March
Jean-Marc
Connerotte