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10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Jean-Michel Nihoul.md

@@ -36,11 +36,11 @@ Through the Confrérie des Maîtres Brasseurs, the free radio Radio Activité, o
 
 ### Informant
 
-In 1995 and 1996 Nihoul was an informant of the gendarmerie's BSR in Dinant; the gendarmerie had registered him as a coded informant. In May 1995 he passed on information, obtained through [[Michel Lelievre|Michel Lelièvre]], about a stolen car and collected a 30,000-franc reward from the insurer Royale Belge; he later introduced Lelièvre to his handlers. The BSR took no action against Lelièvre in the first half of 1996, though he was wanted to serve a prison sentence and though, the commission found, there were indications that the BSR knew he and Dutroux had stolen a truck in 1995; Nihoul had asked his handler to leave Lelièvre alone. "In the end," the commission wrote, "it was the informant who directed his handlers and not the reverse." Its first report had listed eight indications of protection for Nihoul, among them witnesses who testified under oath that two associates from the entourage of a former minister protected him, and his hold as an informant over a policeman who failed to arrest Lelièvre before Lelièvre took part in the abductions of [[Sabine Dardenne]] and [[Laetitia Delhez]]. The commission concluded that "the Nihoul movement" had operated amid "the relaxation of norms and corrupting behavior" and in that sense had received and granted protection, "rarely in a very spectacular way and, most of the time, in the context of services between friends."[^1]
+In 1995 and 1996 Nihoul was an informant of the gendarmerie's BSR in Dinant; the gendarmerie had registered him as a coded informant. In May 1995 he passed on information, obtained through [[Michel Lelievre|Michel Lelièvre]], about a stolen car and collected a 30,000-franc reward from the insurer Royale Belge; he later introduced Lelièvre to his handlers. The BSR took no action against Lelièvre in the first half of 1996, though he was wanted to serve a prison sentence and though, the commission found, there were indications that the BSR knew he and Dutroux had stolen a truck in 1995; Nihoul had asked his handler to leave Lelièvre alone. "In the end," the commission wrote, "it was the informant who directed his handlers and not the reverse." Its first report had listed eight indications of protection for Nihoul, among them witnesses who testified under oath that two associates from the entourage of a former minister protected him, and his hold as an informant over a policeman who failed to arrest Lelièvre before Lelièvre took part in the abductions of two girls aged 12 and 14. The commission concluded that "the Nihoul movement" had operated amid "the relaxation of norms and corrupting behavior" and in that sense had received and granted protection, "rarely in a very spectacular way and, most of the time, in the context of services between friends."[^1]
 
 ### ASCO and the Dutroux Case
 
-[[Achats Services Commerces]] (ASCO) was founded on July 2, 1991, at Wasmes by the operator of Le Dolo, Nihoul's companion and a third Dolo client, went into voluntary liquidation on June 23, 1995, and was declared bankrupt by the commercial court of Mons on October 9, 1995; Nihoul was at least its de facto manager in 1994, and the commission linked the company to the reports of white Mercedes cars.[^1] He had met Dutroux a year before his arrest through Lelièvre, to whom he sold drugs. [[Michelle Martin]] told investigators that Dutroux had been in frequent contact with Nihoul around the abduction of Laetitia Delhez, and Dutroux said Nihoul was looking for girls for a Belgian prostitution network. Nihoul was led from the courthouse at Neufchâteau on August 16, 1996, to shouts of "à mort." His companion [[Marleen De Cokere]] was arrested in late September. His warrant in the Dutroux case was lifted in January 1997.[^3][^4] In an interview with *Der Spiegel* in 2001, in his two-room flat in Jette with De Cokere beside him, Nihoul said of children, "I never did anything with children. I love children," and that Dutroux had taken the girls "for his own consumption." The magazine reported that the investigation files showed Dutroux had asked his advice on getting into the trade in girls and that Nihoul had advised him to organize sadomasochistic parties, which Nihoul said he had understood to mean adults. He spoke of the group-sex parties he and De Cokere had organized, "but with style," attended by influential politicians and officials at Le Dolo and Faulx-les-Tombes, and said: "Ich habe die Regierung in der Hand" (I have the government in hand). For 20,000 marks more he offered "a sitting minister who is involved in a murder," and, for a six-figure sum, a photograph of the then Prince Albert with a naked sixteen-year-old taken on the second floor of the Mirano club twenty years earlier.[^5] [[Regina Louf]], the witness X1, alleged that he organized parties at which children were abused; the prosecutors-general closed the files opened on her testimony in April 1998.[^6]
+[[Achats Services Commerces]] (ASCO) was founded on July 2, 1991, at Wasmes by the operator of Le Dolo, Nihoul's companion and a third Dolo client, went into voluntary liquidation on June 23, 1995, and was declared bankrupt by the commercial court of Mons on October 9, 1995; Nihoul was at least its de facto manager in 1994, and the commission linked the company to the reports of white Mercedes cars.[^1] He had met Dutroux a year before his arrest through Lelièvre, to whom he sold drugs. [[Michelle Martin]] told investigators that Dutroux had been in frequent contact with Nihoul around the abduction of a 14-year-old girl, and Dutroux said Nihoul was looking for girls for a Belgian prostitution network. Nihoul was led from the courthouse at Neufchâteau on August 16, 1996, to shouts of "à mort." His companion [[Marleen De Cokere]] was arrested in late September. His warrant in the Dutroux case was lifted in January 1997.[^3][^4] In an interview with *Der Spiegel* in 2001, in his two-room flat in Jette with De Cokere beside him, Nihoul said of children, "I never did anything with children. I love children," and that Dutroux had taken the girls "for his own consumption." The magazine reported that the investigation files showed Dutroux had asked his advice on getting into the trade in girls and that Nihoul had advised him to organize sadomasochistic parties, which Nihoul said he had understood to mean adults. He spoke of the group-sex parties he and De Cokere had organized, "but with style," attended by influential politicians and officials at Le Dolo and Faulx-les-Tombes, and said: "Ich habe die Regierung in der Hand" (I have the government in hand). For 20,000 marks more he offered "a sitting minister who is involved in a murder," and, for a six-figure sum, a photograph of the then Prince Albert with a naked sixteen-year-old taken on the second floor of the Mirano club twenty years earlier.[^5] [[Regina Louf]], the witness X1, alleged that he organized parties at which children were abused; the prosecutors-general closed the files opened on her testimony in April 1998.[^6]
 
 At the trial in Arlon in 2004, Dutroux accused Nihoul of being his link to a ring kidnapping girls for prostitution, which Nihoul denied. Véronique Laurent, convicted of ordering the killing of her husband, [[Michel Piro]], testified that Nihoul had come to their bar, La Terrasse, four or five times.[^7] Only seven of the twelve jurors found him guilty of the abductions, and the professional judges acquitted him of every charge connected with the children; the court had returned the jury to consider a lesser charge of complicity in the kidnappings, on which it acquitted him, and the jury convicted him of membership of a gang that smuggled drugs and people into Belgium.[^8] On June 22, 2004, he was sentenced to five years for drug trafficking and criminal association. He left Saint-Gilles prison on parole on April 28, 2006, and retired with his companion to the Belgian coast, where he died on October 23, 2019.[^3][^8]