The_Info_Web/10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Michel Bourlet.md

category	tags	summary	location	relations	created	updated
Law Enforcement & Legal	BelgiumScandals Person Belgium Dutroux	King's prosecutor at Neufchâteau in the Dutroux case, whose telephone was tapped during a 1998 leak inquiry and who was told in 1997 to stop speaking to the press and victims' parents.	Neufchâteau, Belgium	type with role start fn prosecuted Marc Dutroux procureur du Roi, Neufchâteau 1996-08 1 type with role fn reported_to Anne Thily prosecutor-general, Liège 1	2026-04-28	2026-10-09

Michel Bourlet was the procureur du Roi (King's prosecutor) at Neufchâteau during the investigation of Marc Dutroux opened after the abduction of a 14-year-old girl in August 1996, and worked the file alongside the investigating judge Jean-Marc Connerotte. The parliamentary commission noted that Bourlet and Connerotte had preferred, in the past and at the time, to work directly with the investigators rather than through the command of the investigation unit.¹

After Connerotte's replacement by Jacques Langlois in October 1996, the families of the missing children continued to meet Bourlet, whom they trusted, rather than Langlois. On October 24, 1997, Anne Thily, prosecutor-general at the court of appeal in Liège, wrote to Bourlet in a letter marked "personal and confidential" asking him to stop all contact with the press and, temporarily, with the parents of the missing children except on the parts of the files concerning them; the commission found that the families were thereby partly deprived of information on the investigation.¹

In January 1998, amid a press campaign against the witness X1, Regina Louf, fed by leaks from police and judicial circles, the Liège prosecutor-general opened a series of investigations into the leaks, in the course of which Bourlet's telephone was placed under surveillance. At least one officer of the judicial police was charged, in a case said in 2000 to be under examination in the Namur judicial district. The Belgian Senate proposal of 2000 asked what the leak inquiry had found, whom it had charged, and whether the leaks had been intended to protect particular participants in the investigation.²

The X-Dossier

According to S. Dovey, Bourlet led the team that examined the testimony of eight X-witnesses who came forward after Connerotte's appeal, compiled as the X-Dossier. It concerned orgies, hunts and murders at villas in Knokke-Heist near the Royal Zoute Golf Club, at the brothel of X1's grandmother Cecile Beernaert in Knokke, frequented by Paul Vanden Boeynants and the Lippens family, in the Ardennes, and at the estates of Baron Benoit de Bonvoisin, Count Leopold Lippens and Count Maurice Auguste Lippens, and snuff films at the ASCO Industries NV factory owned by Roger Boas. The team matched X1's account of "Chrissie" to the 1984 murder of Christine Van Hees, which she described as committed by Dutroux, Jean-Michel Nihoul, Bernard Weinstein and the lawyer Michel Vander Elst, and her account of "Clo," traced through a school yearbook, to the 1983 death of Carine Dellaert, found in a septic tank, whose autopsy found laminaria sticks and gauze; X1 described a childbirth and a gang rape involving Nihoul, Jean-Paul Dumont and Leopold Lippens. X2 named de Bonvoisin, Dumont and Lippens at sadomasochistic events near Chimay and described orgies at the Mirano club with Princes Philippe and Laurent; X3 described abuse at the castles of Prince Charles, King Baudouin and King Albert between 1950 and 1962; X4 identified X1's friends in pornographic films. The team examined the 1991 disappearance of Katrien de Cuyper and the X-Kiss studio in Antwerp, linked to Zandvoort through Gerrit-Jan Ulrich and Robbie Van Der Plancken; a list by Serge Heylens naming Beat Meier, Edward Brongersma and Philippe Carpentier of CRIES; Dumont's representation of CRIES, whose members used basements of UNICEF for filming, with links through Joseph Douce and Michel Caignet's Gaie France to Spartacus International; hierarchies involving Paul Martens and Christian Social Party politicians backed by the Societe Generale de Banque; and the Abrasax Institute, raided after a note signed "Anubis" was found in Weinstein's cabin, which included police members. A childhood friend of X1 corroborated her account of the brothel. The investigation also found more than twenty calls between Dutroux and Nihoul around the August 9 abduction, financial trails to accounts in Europe, and violent pornographic tapes at Nihoul's home.³

Dovey wrote that Bourlet's team was replaced in 1997 after accusations that it had fed details to X1, and that investigators were charged and cleared in 1999. The dossier was leaked to Flemish journalists and published in 1999 as De X-dossiers, and King Albert sued in 2001. A summary of 1,235 pages, prepared for the 2004 trial, described 300 violent tapes from Nihoul's home, some with members of the elite, and was leaked through WikiLeaks in 2009. More than twenty witnesses died during the investigation, among them Gina Pardaens-Bernaer, who had identified Dutroux-linked material on Apollo Disks, and Hubert Massa, by suicide in 1998. The accused were linked to Operation Gladio networks, and Melchior Wathelet sat on the European Court of Justice. The 2004 trial did not hear the X-witnesses; Bourlet criticized the acquittals and called for cases such as Dellaert's to be reopened.³

The parliamentary commission's complementary report of February 16, 1998 records that Bourlet and Jean-Marc Connerotte had in the past preferred, and still preferred, direct contact between magistrates and investigators, while Judge Langlois preferred to go through the antenna head; Jean-Luc Duterme's note of June 3, 1997 complained that an investigator maintained a direct contact with Bourlet, whom he informed unilaterally.⁴ The commission heard Bourlet on June 3 and October 14, 1997.⁵

The Senate proposal of October 9, 2000 states that after the January 1998 leaks the prosecutor-general of Liège opened investigations and that Bourlet's telephone was at one point placed under surveillance, and that at least one judicial police officer was charged.⁶ On September 28, 1998 the justice committee tabled motions on an interpellation by Frans Lozie on the systematic intimidation of the Neufchâteau prosecutor by the Liège prosecutor-general's office; the recommendation asked the government to do everything so that the Neufchâteau prosecutor could continue his work in full freedom and, if need be, to relieve the Liège prosecutor-general of her functions.⁷

The Arlon Trial

La Libre Belgique reported on June 1, 2004 that at the trial Bourlet spoke at length on the abduction of one of the surviving victims and called Nihoul certainly guilty, while the advocate general said nothing of Nihoul in his requisitions.⁸

Footnotes

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1. Chambre des Représentants de Belgique. Enquête parlementaire sur la manière dont l'enquête, dans ses volets policiers et judiciaires, a été menée dans l'affaire Dutroux-Nihoul et consorts, rapport complémentaire, Doc. 713/8-96/97, February 16, 1998, chapter V; translated from the French. https://www.dekamer.be/kvvcr/pdf_sections/comm/dutroux/49K0713008.pdf ↩︎

2. Sénat de Belgique. Proposition visant à instituer une commission d'enquête parlementaire chargée d'enquêter sur l'éloignement de deux enquêteurs de la cellule d'enquête bruxelloise « Neufchâteau », déposée par M. Frans Lozie, Doc. 2-563/1, October 9, 2000, développements; translated from the French. ↩︎

3. Dovey, S. Eye of the Chickenhawk. Thehotstar, 2023. The underlying X-witness material is Bulté, Annemie, Douglas De Coninck and Marie-Jeanne Van Heeswyck, De X-dossiers: wat België niet mocht weten over de zaak-Dutroux (Houtekiet, 1999). It describes Bourlet as assigned to the case by Connerotte, which inverts their roles, and gives August 13, 1996, for Dutroux's arrest, contradicted by the commission's chronology. ↩︎

4. Chambre des Représentants de Belgique. Enquête parlementaire sur la manière dont l'enquête, dans ses volets policiers et judiciaires, a été menée dans l'affaire Dutroux-Nihoul et consorts, rapport complémentaire, Doc. 713/8-96/97, February 16, 1998, chapter V, pp. 153-154; translated from the French. https://www.dekamer.be/FLWB/PDF/49/0713/49K0713008.pdf ↩︎

5. Chambre des Représentants de Belgique. Enquête parlementaire sur la manière dont l'enquête, dans ses volets policiers et judiciaires, a été menée dans l'affaire Dutroux-Nihoul et consorts, rapport complémentaire, Doc. 713/8-96/97, February 16, 1998, hearings section, p. 34; translated from the French. https://www.dekamer.be/FLWB/PDF/49/0713/49K0713008.pdf ↩︎

6. Sénat de Belgique. Proposition visant à instituer une commission d'enquête parlementaire chargée d'enquêter sur l'éloignement de deux enquêteurs de la cellule d'enquête bruxelloise « Neufchâteau », déposée par M. Frans Lozie, Doc. 2-563/1, October 9, 2000, développements; translated from the French. https://www.senate.be/www/?MIval=/publications/viewPub.html&COLL=S&LEG=2&NR=563&VOLGNR=1&LANG=fr ↩︎

7. Chambre des Représentants de Belgique. Motions of September 28, 1998, Doc. 25/365-1995; translated from the French and Dutch. https://www.dekamer.be/FLWB/PDF/49/0025/49K0025365.pdf ↩︎

8. "Au plus vif de la polémique." La Libre Belgique, June 1, 2004; translated from the French. https://www.lalibre.be/belgique/2004/06/01/au-plus-vif-de-la-polemique-FBRY7S2PXJCR7JBHRC5T5HWYYU/ ↩︎