Cries of betrayal as Dutroux inquiry ends

A much-criticised six-year judicial investigation into the activities of the alleged child murderer and rapist Marc Dutroux has come to a close in Belgium, but it is likely to be at least a year before he goes on trial.

Dutroux, 45, who has been behind bars since his arrest six years ago this week, will almost certainly face charges of kidnapping and raping six children, and murdering four of them, but the investigation has largely ignored allegations that he was part of a paedophile network, with connections at the highest level in Belgian society.

The Dutroux scandal, which provoked the so-called "white march" when 350,000 people protested against alleged corruption in Belgian society in October 1996, continues to split the country. Police were accused of shocking incompetence in the initial investigation into the missing children. Dutroux was already a convicted paedophile but a series of crucial leads, linking him to the abductions, were never followed up.

The great majority of Belgians remain convinced that Dutroux was part of a network that extended into the political and judicial élite. The Belgian judiciary and politicians insist there is no evidence for this.

The investigating magistrate, Judge Jacques Langlois, was ordered by a court in Liège in October last year to complete his report as rapidly as possible, focusing only on established facts. Any wider accusations should be examined by a further inquiry after the trial.

But parents of two of the abducted girls, who starved to death in Dutroux's cellar, have now dissociated themselves from the investigation, claiming that the judge, and the wider judicial system, have deliberately obstructed attempts to broaden the inquiry. Carine and Gino Russo, parents of eight-year-old Mélissa, and Louisa and Jean-Denis Lejeune, parents of Julie, also eight, say they will no longer co-operate with the judge. Ms Russo said his final report – setting aside all evidence of a wider plot – was an "act of treachery towards the truth and the memory of the little girls".

Proponents of the plot theory point to a series of apparent police and judicial bungles which allowed Dutroux to operate with impunity until he was arrested. Two girls aged 14 and 12 were found alive, hidden under his house, near Charleroi. The bodies of the two eight-year-olds were recovered later and the remains of two teenage girls were found at another house.

A gendarmerie fraud unit uncovered evidence of unexplained, large payments into Dutroux's bank accounts at the time of each kidnapping but this information was excluded from the judicial investigation.

"[The judge] refused almost all the extra lines of inquiry we asked for every time we smelt an eel hiding under some rock," Ms Russo said this week. "Dutroux himself has said there were well-known personalities involved in his network but who knows whether he is telling the truth?"

She added: "The jury will be faced with a mission impossible, to answer questions which the examining magistrate refused to consider."