Anger over child rapist interview

Victims' relatives have long claimed that Dutroux was part of a paedophile network

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- An unauthorised televised interview with a notorious Belgian paedophile has been criticised by the father of a teenage girl believed to have been killed by the child rapist.

Marc Dutroux admitted in the interview, broadcast on Monday, that he was guilty of locking up two young girls who starved to death in his cellar.

But he stopped short of accepting responsibility for their murders according to comments captured on an audio recording made by a television journalist smuggled into his cell by a Belgian senator.

Dutroux has been awaiting trial since 1996 when he was arrested and charged with abducting, torturing, raping and murdering four girls, including two eight-year-olds -- Julie Lejeune and Melissa Russo -- who starved to death in makeshift cells under one of his houses.

"I kept Julie and Melissa captive at my place, so I'm not innocent. I kept An and Eefje (teenagers An Marchal and Eefje Lambrecks) captive at my place, so I'm not innocent. I'm absolutely guilty," Dutroux said.

Dutroux, who has always professed his innocence of the 1996 murder charges, has already served time for a paedophile conviction. He was released from prison in 1992 after serving three years of a 13-year sentence for raping five girls.

The father of An Marchal, whose body was found buried at another property belonging to Dutroux in the southern Belgian city of Charleroi, told Reuters he was angry the child rapist had been interviewed.

"I didn't want to hear it anymore. I can't listen to his voice. It makes me so sick," Paul Marchal said, adding that Dutroux said little that was new.

'Regular contact'

Flemish television channel VTM would not say whether Dutroux knew he was being interviewed by a journalist.

But in excerpts VTM made available in advance, Dutroux said there was no doubt that a network "with various criminal ramifications" existed.

"I was in regular contact with people belonging to that network. But the justice system doesn't want to investigate this lead," he was recorded by the VTM journalist as saying.

Forensic tests were recently carried out on 6,000 hair samples taken from the basement cell of Dutroux's house to try to identify if the captive girls had had other visitors. The inquiry has delayed the case coming to court. A trial, postponed several times, is due to start next year.

Gino Russo, father of Melissa, also reacted with horror. "It's indecent," he told The Guardian newspaper. "He says that he kept Julie and Melissa, so that's rape, kidnapping and sadism for starters. He talks about a network when we are already at the end of the investigation.

"It is now up to the judge to draw up the [trial] plan with what he has. If he says there is a network but offers no further details nothing will change. But if he cooperates then maybe the investigation will be restarted."

Dutroux's revelations are likely to stoke conspiracy theories of a Belgian cover-up by people in high places allegedly linked to the paedophile scandal.

The case traumatised Belgium, drawing 250,000 on to the streets in protest at widespread police incompetence during a 14-month search for Julie and Melissa.

In one case, police in one region failed to pass on information about Dutroux's activities to investigators in another searching for the two girls.