Police have stepped up security around the remote convent that will host the ex-wife and accomplice of the notorious Belgian paedophile killer Marc Dutroux.
Michelle Martin is the ex-wife and accomplice of paedophile killer Marc Dutroux Photo: AP
The word 'No' has been daubed on the order of Saint Clare nunnery Photo: AFP/GETTY
The nunnery is in the village of Malonne Photo: REUTERS
Local protesters daubed the word “No” in yellow on the walls of the order of
Saint Clare nunnery in the village of Malonne following a court decision on
Tuesday to parole Michelle Martin there.
Martin, 52, will serve the second half of her 30-year sentence in the convent
after being controversially paroled for her part in the kidnap, rape and
murder of young girls in the 1990s.
Dozens of locals staged a protest march to the convent and released white
balloons into the sky on Tuesday night, while calls for a major national
demonstration on Friday appeared on social media networks in Belgium.
“I asked for police reinforcements,” said Maxime Prevot, the mayor of the
nearby city of Namur. "The police dogs team is in place and officers are
controlling traffic.”
Martin, a former primary school teacher, was ordered by the court to "keep her
distance" from relatives of victims under the parole ruling which state
prosecutors have appealed.
Belgium's top appeal court has 30 days to consider the appeal.
Jean-Denis Lejeune, whose eight-year-old daughter Julie was one of four young
girls killed in Dutroux's murderous spree between 1995 and 1996, said the
decision to release Martin was “akin to chucking a fox into a henhouse.”
Dutroux himself was jailed for life in June 2004 for the kidnap and rape in the 1990s of six young and teenage girls and the murder of the four of them who died.
Martin was also convicted in 2004 helping Dutroux hold his victims prisoner, and of complicity in the deaths of two of the girls, found starved to death in a locked cellar.
Martin, who married Dutroux in 1983 and had three children by him before their divorce in 2003, has been in jail since the case was uncovered in 1996.
Source: AFP
Dutroux himself was jailed for life in June 2004 for the kidnap and rape in the 1990s of six young and teenage girls and the murder of the four of them who died.
Martin was also convicted in 2004 helping Dutroux hold his victims prisoner, and of complicity in the deaths of two of the girls, found starved to death in a locked cellar.
Martin, who married Dutroux in 1983 and had three children by him before their divorce in 2003, has been in jail since the case was uncovered in 1996.
Source: AFP
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