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Raw Blame History

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Witness X1

According to the Senate proposal of October 9, 2000, the first contact came through a telephone line that Connerotte had opened for people with information on child abuse. A Dutch-speaking caller said that a friend knew of grave abuse of children. The gendarme Patrick De Baets was in Connerotte's office to report on his financial inquiry into the assets of Dutroux and took the call because of the language. After some days the friend contacted De Baets, and a special cell of the Brussels criminal investigation brigade (BSR) under De Baets questioned her. The interviews were videotaped and each was summarized in French for the Neufchâteau magistrates, while senior gendarmerie officers and magistrates watched from behind glass.³ She was questioned at length thirteen times under the code name X1.³

The parliamentary commission's complementary report of February 16, 1998 gives a different account of the first contact. It records that a friend of the Dutch-speaking anonymous witness telephoned Connerotte, who put her in contact with a Dutch-speaking investigator of the third section (3e SRC) of the Brussels BSR and then issued a written instruction (apostille) to question her. The same passage records that the 3e SRC members were assigned to the related files of September 1996 on the basis of this witness's statements, under files 109/96, 110/96, 111/96, 136/96 and 139/96.⁵ The commission records that the Neufchâteau antenna was set up in separate premises shortly after November 25, 1996, under the command of Jean-Luc Duterme.⁵

The commission's complementary report adds that the Brussels BSR members came into the inquiry by chance, that the antenna had 32 members in five teams under one coordinator, and that the related files 109/96, 110/96, 111/96, 136/96 and 139/96 were opened at the end of September 1996.⁵

How X1 Began

According to Bulté, De Coninck and Van Heeswyck, Operation Bagou was formally opened on September 19, 1996 on an initial report about a man called Tony who had supplied children in the 1980s. Her friend gave De Baets a manuscript of 1989 titled "Levenslang" (Life sentence), signed "Regina Louf, december 1989", which was largely reused in her 1998 book. Louf agreed to one interview and withdrew; a Ghent therapist telephoned the BOB to say that her patient suffered from dissociative disorders; a legal frame for anonymous testimony was agreed with the prosecutor Michel Bourlet, and the code X1 was assigned. On September 20, 1996 she telephoned De Baets: "I have thought it over." Her parting words to him, as the authors quote them, were that he would never be able to say she had not warned him: "They will not let you do it."⁶

Her Account

Louf summarized her family background in two sentences given to Der Spiegel: "My mother was abused by her father, a police commissioner in Knokke. I was rented out by my mother, with my father's knowledge."⁷

The writer S. Dovey wrote that Louf said that from early childhood she had been prostituted by her grandmother, Cecile Beernaert, at a villa in Knokke-Heist near the Royal Zoute Golf Club. At about twelve, Dovey wrote, she was handed to a pimp, Tony Van den Boggaert, who took her to parties in Brussels attended by Jean-Michel Nihoul, and the parties moved from sex to torture and murder. Among the clients and participants she named were the former prime minister Paul Vanden Boeynants and members of the Lippens family, Count Leopold Lippens and Count Maurice Auguste Lippens. Dovey wrote that she said she had witnessed the 1984 murder of Christine Van Hees in an abandoned mushroom farm at Auderghem, naming Dutroux, Nihoul, Bernard Weinstein and the lawyer Michel Vander Elst as present, and the 1983 death of Carine Dellaert after childbirth. She described a factory site that investigators connected to ASCO Industries NV, a villa at Faulx-les-Tombes, and parties on the Avenue Louise.⁸

The Observer reported in 2002 that Louf had told a police team in 1996, under filmed and supervised conditions, that her regular clients included judges, one of the country's most powerful politicians (since dead) and a prominent banker, and that the parties involved sadism, torture and murder. The same paper reported that from the age of twelve she had been "given" by her parents to a family friend who had a key to their house and collected her from school.²

The 1998 book in which she set out her account was Zwijgen is voor daders. De getuigenis van X1 (Silence is for perpetrators: the testimony of X1), published by Houtekiet / Linkeroever Uitgevers.⁴

Checking of Her Statements

The Senate proposal states that her account of the 1984 Auderghem murder led the Brussels gendarme Aimé Bille to the unsolved file, and that he found that the earlier investigation under the investigating judge Jean-Claude Van Espen had "multiple gaps." Her statements led to the reopening of the murders of Van Hees, Dellaert, Veronique Dubrulle, Katrien de Cuyper and Hanim Ayse Mazibas.³ A psychiatric report on her by Professor Igodt of the Catholic University of Leuven was read so differently by others that its author publicly urged "extreme caution" about the concrete details of her testimony while calling them "useful data" for further investigation.³

The Observer reported that by the time the team was dismissed the police believed they had verified key elements of her account, and quoted the gendarme Rudi Hoskens, assigned to re-examine the unsolved case, as saying that she gave details "impossible to give without having been there": the way the body was found and the way she described the person killed. The paper wrote that in 1996 she described to the team the intricate interior of the mushroom farm (wallpaper, sinks, ceiling hooks, a network of stairs and adjoining rooms), and that the son of the farm's former owner, shown her description, said she could not have described the house as well unless she had been there.²

The parliamentary commission's complementary report records that its councillor-investigator Marique, instructed to look for mechanisms protecting Jean-Michel Nihoul and Dutroux in this unsolved murder, was informed that an anonymous witness had associated Nihoul and Annie Bouty with it. It records that Van Espen, who had conducted the original investigation in the 1980s, reacted violently to Marique's contact with antenna investigators, and that antenna members criticised the 1980s investigation by the Brussels judicial police.⁹

The Book Record

Bulté, De Coninck and Van Heeswyck wrote that Louf has been pilloried abroad for statements she never made: that she described satanic rituals and accused members of the royal family. In reality, they wrote, she never said anything of the kind, and X3 did.¹⁰

They report that on March 20, 1997, instead of a planned operation at 43 addresses, a single search was carried out, at Louf's rented house in Ghent, by a BOB team on the order of Van Espen. The team seized a video, a press clipping, a notebook, fax copies, four family albums and notes on her personalities. Louf is quoted as saying: "I hope that next time you raid the perpetrators!"¹¹ A Neufchâteau magistrate had planned to go on interviewing her for two or three years with parallel verification.¹¹

The same book records that in early 1998 Professor Igodt, whose report on her had described her as borderline, protested on RTL-TVi against one-sided readings and called her "an exceptionally balanced woman whose testimony can indeed have its importance."¹² On April 5, 1998, fourteen months after a photo identification, the BOB investigators De Pauw and Verhaeghen showed her twenty photographs of Turkish girls, and the authors report that she picked out the correct photograph of a murdered girl whose picture had not yet appeared in the press; her statements were deemed worthless shortly after.¹³ The investigators of the Antwerp case of Katrien de Cuyper told the authors: "In the beginning we believed this testimony. We are not ashamed of it. There were elements that were inexplicable for us, unless she had been there."¹⁴ A former Neufchâteau investigator told them that everything else in X1's story could be dropped for his part, but that he could not understand the mushroom farm file: "Those are facts."¹⁵

On October 21, 1998 the justice minister Tony Van Parys told the Chamber that the investigating judge Vincke closed the X1 track at the end of April 1998 on the basis of the conclusions of the coordination meetings with the magistrates of Ghent, Antwerp and Brussels.¹⁶ The Ghent prosecutor Jean Soenen told a press conference that all the girls' names she had known in her circuit were found to be old schoolmates and classmates, whose accounts the press release called pure fantasy; the authors set this against classmates' statements that an older man collected her after school.¹⁷ They report that the Canada story published by De Standaard and Het Nieuwsblad on April 29, 1998 was refuted when her lawyer read the 61-page confrontation report in early 1999 and found that Louf said she knew nothing of a trip to Canada: "The truth is the reverse of what was communicated to the public."¹⁸

The authors report that the Brussels substitute prosecutor Paule Somers told De Morgen in spring 1998 that the chance of Dutroux and Van Hees having met at the skating rink was "very small," and note that the search at Marcinelle on August 13, 1996 had seized skating-rink schedules, among them those of the Poseidon rink in Sint-Lambrechts-Woluwe.¹⁹ They also report that a journalist's book misquoted her interview, turning a "yes" into a "no" and putting the interrogators' words in her mouth, which the journalist called a "small mistake" at a debate in Tubize on March 9, 1999.²⁰ A letter to Verwilghen from an elderly Ghent woman, as the authors summarize it, said that in Knokke in November 1944 Louf's grandmother had been jeered at as "the whore madam."²¹

The authors also report on a 1989 gendarmerie interview-technique course at which Louf took part once as a role-player, where instructors described her as too labile and too emotionally involved and said she seemed to draw on her own experience; De Standaard later reported that she had played a raped woman repeatedly in 1989 and 1990, and the inquiry by Judge Pignolet found one session.²²

The Relecture of Her Statements

The commission's complementary report describes the rereading (relecture) of the X1 statements in detail. On January 14, 1997 the antenna commander Duterme wrote to the five team leaders that the head of the antenna had to be informed of every initiative toward magistrates that exceeded the antenna's capacity, and of every change in the direction of an inquiry. The commission describes this requirement as the point of dispute between investigators who had worked directly with the magistrates and those who worked through the antenna head.²³

On June 3, 1997 Duterme sent a note to the commander of the Brussels BSR stating that he could no longer work with the team that had conducted the interviews of the anonymous witness. The note accused one investigator of manipulation and of lacking objectivity, and complained of that investigator's direct contact with the prosecutor Michel Bourlet. The note nevertheless said that a disciplinary inquiry would be inopportune at that stage, since the investigator's position in the inquiry was important. The same note reported that the five victims heard by the antenna had yielded nothing that could objectify their statements, despite all the investigative measures taken. Duterme also recorded that he had assigned another team to reread the statements of the anonymous witness relating to the Brussels file, which had been reopened at the end of January 1997 before the same investigating judge who had led it in the 1980s.²³

The Senate proposal describes the same period from the side of De Baets's team. From April 1997 the tension between Duterme and De Baets rose. Duterme asked colleagues of De Baets to reread the interviews and report on the credibility of the witness's statements and on possible manipulation of the interviews by De Baets's team. The first report, which the proposal describes as very negative for De Baets, itself totally lacked credibility, so a second reading was ordered.³

On June 22, 1997 the Brussels investigating judge Jean-Claude Van Espen withdrew his confidence from the antenna's team, suspended the investigative acts it was carrying out on his instructions, and asked that it be restructured. The commission notes that the team had carried out about 250 of his instructions without any comment from him on their quality.²⁴

On July 11, 1997 the Neufchâteau investigating judge ordered a general rereading of all the related files except file 110/96, to be carried out by investigators other than those who had conducted the interviews. His service note for file 109 prescribed a reread on an adversarial basis, with further interviews where necessary, and a list of steps aimed at making the X witnesses credible (crédibiliser les X).²⁴ The commission's figures show the effect on the unsolved murder file. From October 24, 1996 to June 24, 1997 it had been fed with some twenty reports a week; from June 24, 1997 the average fell to one a week.²⁵

On February 16, 1998 the commission reported that the rereading was still not finished, although it had been announced as nearly complete several times.²⁶ The Senate proposal states that in the summer of 1997 the Neufchâteau judge Jacques Langlois ordered a complete rereading of all the related files and removed De Baets and Bille from the investigation.³ The commission records that on July 14, 1997 Duterme told the antenna that the Ghent prosecutor no longer wished to use its investigators for his related file, that the Brussels judge had suspended his acts and that the Neufchâteau judge had ordered the rereading, and that the targeted team was therefore stood down. On September 2, 1997 the Neufchâteau judge wrote in principle against their definitive removal until they had been able to answer the complaints.²⁴

The Senate proposal states that the rereading was closed a week after the commission deposited its report, and that the file then went to the Neufchâteau judge Jacques Langlois and the Brussels prosecutor-general, who had not yet drawn conclusions on the position of De Baets and of the gendarme Aimé Bille.³

On the removal of the two investigators, the Senate proposal states that the inquiry into them by the investigating judge Pignolet was closed without further action, and that a gendarmerie disciplinary inquiry acquitted them completely. The proposal records that once they obtained access to the rereading files they found that procès-verbaux had been falsified, and that they filed more than eighty complaints for calumny, defamation and forgery against colleagues and magistrates.³ The Zembla programme of March 18, 2004 states that the gendarmerie leadership judged after some months that the inquiry had been conducted incorrectly, that the investigators were suspected of falsifying a procès-verbal, and that three years later an internal gendarmerie commission reported that they had done their work with integrity and professionally.²⁵

Public Identity and the Press

Louf gave up her anonymity in January 1998, in part to protest the stalling of the inquiry and amid a press campaign against her. The Senate proposal attributes part of that campaign to leaks from police and judicial circles.³

The Observer reported in 2002 that the Belgian public broadcaster RTBF's current affairs programme Au Nom de la Loi presented her parents as victims of a fantasist. In the Observer's account, the parents had already told the police that a family friend in his forties had a key to their home and unlimited access to their twelve-year-old daughter, and the friend had himself admitted a relationship with her to the police. The programme mentioned neither point.² The Senate proposal reports, separately, that a man it calls her "so-called protector" admitted on April 23, 1998, in a confrontation with Louf, that he had had sex with her when she was twelve, with her parents' knowledge, and had once lent her to others. The proposal states that the admission was not pursued because the acts were time-barred, and it does not name him. According to Bulté, De Coninck and Van Heeswyck, the man signed a statement admitting a relationship when she was twelve, lasting a little under a year, and at the confrontation said it was between her fourteenth and sixteenth years; the final report of the Ghent BOB of June 2, 1998 concluded that between the ages of twelve and sixteen she had a sexual relationship with a much older adult man, and the Ghent prosecutor's press release then put her age at about fourteen to fifteen.³²⁷

On January 30, 1998 magistrates charged with verifying the witnesses' statements in the districts of Antwerp, Brussels, Ghent and Neufchâteau held an exceptional press conference at which they stated that no element of proof supported the witnesses' statements, which also contained many contradictions. La Libre Belgique reported this in 2004 and added that her account had been recorded over more than 1,500 pages.²⁸

On April 23, 1998, the day Dutroux briefly escaped, the prosecutors-general of Antwerp, Ghent and Brussels decided that "no proof could be found that Regina Louf could make any contribution whatsoever to these investigations" and closed the related files, except the main file before Langlois.³²⁹

On March 17, 2000 La Libre Belgique reported that semen recovered from the body of Van Hees had been analyzed and matched neither Nihoul nor any known suspect in the Dutroux affair. The paper described this as destroying the credit of X1 on the point. The same article reports that the chambre du conseil at Neufchâteau removed the Louf file, which it called the most emblematic of the X witnesses, from the prosecutor's office on October 30, 2003.²⁸

The commission's conclusions of February 16, 1998 state that the antenna's head took decisions that were not his to take, namely the rereading of the files and the designation, with exclusions, of the investigators to carry it out, which the Neufchâteau judge later endorsed without fixing any deadline; that the Brussels judge gave disproportionate weight to the Marique contacts; and that the commission, with the data it had, could not say whether the antenna's problems were related to protection mechanisms. It stated that only the judicial inquiry or an inquiry into the inquiry (a parliamentary commission or the chambre des mises en accusation) concerning the murder could settle the matter, and that clarity was required.³⁰

Official Positions and Later Statements

The Chamber of Representatives took up the matter repeatedly in 1998. On May 13, 1998 a recommendation on an interpellation by Frans Lozie asked the government to inform the president of the former Dutroux commission without delay of the conclusions the investigators drew from the rereading of the X1 interviews.³¹ On October 21, 1998 the Chamber's motions included an interpellation by Marc Verwilghen, who had chaired the parliamentary commission, on the claim that the high command of the gendarmerie had misled the judiciary in the related files.³²

The Liège prosecutor-general Anne Thily held the official position on the witness. In 2002 she told the Observer's reporter that Louf was a fantasist who had invented everything, a view the paper described as the official line in Belgium.² On January 16, 2002 Thily made statements about Louf to BBC journalists. On November 27, 2002 the Chamber's justice committee tabled motions on an interpellation by Vincent Decroly. The recommendation called Thily's statements "mendacious and disqualifying", stated that Louf was proven to have suffered repeated and serious sexual abuse, and asked that a disciplinary file be opened against Thily over her BBC statements. A pure and simple motion, signed by Jacqueline Herzet and Yolande Avontroodt, proposed moving to the order of the day.²⁹

Michel Clippe, a former adjudant of the Brussels BSR, told La Dernière Heure in 2020 that his checks after Louf's statements allowed him to verify a great deal of what she said.³³ A Zembla programme description of March 11, 2004 states that X1 had "daderkennis" (knowledge of the perpetrators) in the Van Hees and Dellaert cases and that the gendarmerie confirmed much of what she said; it states also that Dutroux's lawyer asked that she be heard at the Arlon trial.²⁶

In March 2020, at the age of 51, Louf gave an interview to La Dernière Heure, the first in more than twenty years in which she spoke about her testimony. Asked how she regarded her testimony as X1, she said: "I was far too young and far too vulnerable when I testified. I was a young mother, just at the start of a long and difficult process, and suddenly I had to testify about situations I could not yet handle emotionally."³³

Closure and the Court Record

The writer S. Dovey wrote that the Arlon trial of 2004 did not hear the X witnesses.⁸ The Observer had reported in 2002 that judges had announced that Louf would not be called as a witness in any future trial of Dutroux or his associates.² At the trial the jury split on whether Nihoul had taken part in the kidnappings. The court sent the jury back 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.³⁴ On June 22, 2004 the court sentenced him to five years; Al Jazeera reported that he was acquitted of conspiracy and kidnapping and found guilty of drug trafficking and other crimes.³⁵ La Libre Belgique later reported that he received five years for drug trafficking and criminal association.³⁶ In November 2007 Belga reported that Nihoul was claiming 250,000 euros in damages from Marc Verwilghen, the former justice minister who had chaired the commission, with hearing set for November 19, and that he planned further summonses against Louf, journalists who supported the network thesis and the Belgian State.³⁷ According to the Zembla description of March 11, 2004, Dutroux's lawyer had asked that X1 be heard at the trial.²⁶

The 2020 La Dernière Heure report states that no judicial finding has been made on the account of the man Louf named as her pimp, and that he admitted to having had sexual relations with her when she was twelve and he was thirty-nine.³³ The paper also reported that her mother had acknowledged that at that time he held a key to the house and came when he wished.³³

Footnotes

Bulté, Annemie, Douglas De Coninck and Marie-Jeanne Van Heeswyck. De X-dossiers: wat België niet mocht weten over de zaak-Dutroux. Antwerp: Houtekiet, 1999, p. 139 (interview with Louf); in Dutch: "Geboren in Gent op 29 januari 1969 en verhuisd naar Knokke, bij mijn grootmoeder, toen ik anderhalf jaar oud was." ↩︎
Frenkiel, Olenka. "Belgium's silent heart of darkness." The Observer, May 5, 2002. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/may/05/dutroux.featuresreview ↩︎
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 ↩︎
Louf, Regina. Zwijgen is voor daders. De getuigenis van X1. Houtekiet / Linkeroever Uitgevers, 1998, 310 pp., ISBN 90-5240-487-9. https://openlibrary.org/isbn/9052404879 ↩︎
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, p. 152; translated from the French. https://www.dekamer.be/FLWB/PDF/49/0713/49K0713008.pdf ↩︎
Bulté, Annemie, Douglas De Coninck and Marie-Jeanne Van Heeswyck. De X-dossiers: wat België niet mocht weten over de zaak-Dutroux. Antwerp: Houtekiet, 1999, p. 134 and notes; Dutch: "Ik heb me bedacht"; "Ze zullen u niet laten doen." ↩︎
Smoltczyk, Alexander. "Im Netz der Dossiers." Der Spiegel, no. 42/2001, October 14, 2001; translated from the German. https://www.spiegel.de/panorama/im-netz-der-dossiers-a-c9fe5b47-0002-0001-0000-000020353850 ↩︎
Dovey, S. Eye of the Chickenhawk. Thehotstar, 2023. Dovey draws on Louf, Zwijgen is voor daders (1998), and Bulté, Annemie, Douglas De Coninck and Marie-Jeanne Van Heeswyck, De X-dossiers: wat België niet mocht weten over de zaak-Dutroux, Houtekiet, 1999. ↩︎
Chambre des Représentants de Belgique. Doc. 713/8-96/97, February 16, 1998, chapter V, p. 150; translated from the French. https://www.dekamer.be/FLWB/PDF/49/0713/49K0713008.pdf ↩︎
Bulté, Annemie, Douglas De Coninck and Marie-Jeanne Van Heeswyck. De X-dossiers: wat België niet mocht weten over de zaak-Dutroux. Antwerp: Houtekiet, 1999, p. 323; Dutch: "In werkelijkheid heeft ze nooit iets van die strekking verklaard. X3 deed dat wel." ↩︎
Bulté, Annemie, Douglas De Coninck and Marie-Jeanne Van Heeswyck. De X-dossiers: wat België niet mocht weten over de zaak-Dutroux. Antwerp: Houtekiet, 1999, p. 353 (search of March 20, 1997, report 150.822). ↩︎
Bulté, Annemie, Douglas De Coninck and Marie-Jeanne Van Heeswyck. De X-dossiers: wat België niet mocht weten over de zaak-Dutroux. Antwerp: Houtekiet, 1999, p. 354; Dutch: "een uitzonderlijk evenwichtige vrouw wier getuigenis wel degelijk haar belang kan hebben." ↩︎
Bulté, Annemie, Douglas De Coninck and Marie-Jeanne Van Heeswyck. De X-dossiers: wat België niet mocht weten over de zaak-Dutroux. Antwerp: Houtekiet, 1999, p. 376. ↩︎
Bulté, Annemie, Douglas De Coninck and Marie-Jeanne Van Heeswyck. De X-dossiers: wat België niet mocht weten over de zaak-Dutroux. Antwerp: Houtekiet, 1999, chapter on the De Cuyper case, after p. 381; Dutch: "In het begin geloofden wij in deze getuigenis." ↩︎
Bulté, Annemie, Douglas De Coninck and Marie-Jeanne Van Heeswyck. De X-dossiers: wat België niet mocht weten over de zaak-Dutroux. Antwerp: Houtekiet, 1999, after p. 234; Dutch: "Dat zijn feiten." ↩︎
Bulté, Annemie, Douglas De Coninck and Marie-Jeanne Van Heeswyck. De X-dossiers: wat België niet mocht weten over de zaak-Dutroux. Antwerp: Houtekiet, 1999, p. 501 (Chamber interpellation of October 21, 1998). ↩︎
Bulté, Annemie, Douglas De Coninck and Marie-Jeanne Van Heeswyck. De X-dossiers: wat België niet mocht weten over de zaak-Dutroux. Antwerp: Houtekiet, 1999, p. 502. ↩︎
Bulté, Annemie, Douglas De Coninck and Marie-Jeanne Van Heeswyck. De X-dossiers: wat België niet mocht weten over de zaak-Dutroux. Antwerp: Houtekiet, 1999, pp. 483-484; Dutch: "De waarheid is omgekeerd aan diegene die aan de publieke opinie is medegedeeld." ↩︎
Bulté, Annemie, Douglas De Coninck and Marie-Jeanne Van Heeswyck. De X-dossiers: wat België niet mocht weten over de zaak-Dutroux. Antwerp: Houtekiet, 1999, p. 234 and following; Dutch: "is wel zeer klein." ↩︎
Bulté, Annemie, Douglas De Coninck and Marie-Jeanne Van Heeswyck. De X-dossiers: wat België niet mocht weten over de zaak-Dutroux. Antwerp: Houtekiet, 1999, p. 417. ↩︎
Bulté, Annemie, Douglas De Coninck and Marie-Jeanne Van Heeswyck. De X-dossiers: wat België niet mocht weten over de zaak-Dutroux. Antwerp: Houtekiet, 1999, the letter to Marc Verwilghen printed in the book (unnumbered leaf); Dutch: "de hoerenmadam." ↩︎
Bulté, Annemie, Douglas De Coninck and Marie-Jeanne Van Heeswyck. De X-dossiers: wat België niet mocht weten over de zaak-Dutroux. Antwerp: Houtekiet, 1999, p. 527. ↩︎
Chambre des Représentants de Belgique. Doc. 713/8-96/97, February 16, 1998, chapter V, pp. 153-155 (January 14, 1997 letter; June 3, 1997 note); translated from the French. https://www.dekamer.be/FLWB/PDF/49/0713/49K0713008.pdf ↩︎
Chambre des Représentants de Belgique. Doc. 713/8-96/97, February 16, 1998, chapter V, pp. 156-157 (June 22, 1997 suspension; July 11, 1997 rereading order); translated from the French. https://www.dekamer.be/FLWB/PDF/49/0713/49K0713008.pdf ↩︎
BNNVARA Zembla. "De X-dossiers, deel II," broadcast March 18, 2004; programme description in Dutch, translated. https://www.bnnvara.nl/zembla/artikelen/de-x-dossiers-deel-ii ↩︎
BNNVARA Zembla. "De X-dossiers, deel I," broadcast March 11, 2004; programme description in Dutch, translated. https://www.bnnvara.nl/zembla/artikelen/de-x-dossiers-deel-i ↩︎
Bulté, Annemie, Douglas De Coninck and Marie-Jeanne Van Heeswyck. De X-dossiers: wat België niet mocht weten over de zaak-Dutroux. Antwerp: Houtekiet, 1999, pp. 513-514, notes p. 521. ↩︎
Planchar, Roland. "Des 'X' sans crédit." La Libre Belgique, February 16, 2004. https://www.lalibre.be/belgique/2004/02/16/des-x-sans-credit-LKLTKQICABBWXKFUTUJNXL6NRY/ ↩︎
Chambre des Représentants de Belgique. Motions of November 27, 2002 on the interpellation of Vincent Decroly, DOC 50 0025/415; translated from the French and Dutch. https://www.dekamer.be/FLWB/Pdf/50/0025/50K0025415.pdf ↩︎
Chambre des Représentants de Belgique. Doc. 713/8-96/97, February 16, 1998, chapter V, section 3, "Conclusion," pp. 159-161; translated from the French. https://www.dekamer.be/FLWB/PDF/49/0713/49K0713008.pdf ↩︎
Chambre des Représentants de Belgique. Motions of May 13, 1998 on the interpellation of Frans Lozie, Doc. 25/339-1995; translated from the French and Dutch. https://www.dekamer.be/FLWB/PDF/49/0025/49K0025339.pdf ↩︎
Chambre des Représentants de Belgique. Motions of October 21, 1998 on the interpellations of Marc Verwilghen, Frans Lozie, Gerolf Annemans, Charles Janssens and Vincent Decroly, Doc. 25/370-1995, interpellation no. 2063; translated from the French and Dutch. https://www.dekamer.be/FLWB/PDF/49/0025/49K0025370.pdf ↩︎
"Régina Louf, témoin X1 dans l'affaire Dutroux, brise le silence." La Dernière Heure, online, 2020; interview with Louf and statement of Michel Clippe; translated from the French. https://www.dhnet.be/actu/faits/regina-louf-temoin-x1-dans-l-affaire-dutroux-brise-le-silence-marc-dutroux-libere-je-m-y-prepare-5e652e1e9978e2051e15c16c ↩︎
Associated Press. "Notorious child rapist-murderer convicted." NBC News, June 17, 2004. https://www.nbcnews.com/id/5233011 ↩︎
"'Most hated' Belgian in jail for life." Al Jazeera, June 22, 2004. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2004/6/22/most-hated-belgian-in-jail-for-life ↩︎
"Michel Nihoul est décédé." La Libre Belgique, October 23, 2019; translated from the French. https://www.lalibre.be/belgique/societe/michel-nihoul-est-decede-5db04ec39978e218e36b29be ↩︎
"Michel Nihoul traîne Verwilghen en justice." Belga, in La Libre Belgique, November 9, 2007; translated from the French. https://www.lalibre.be/belgique/michel-nihoul-traine-verwilghen-en-justice-51b89661e4b0de6db9b0d7fd ↩︎

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