Former wife of Belgian killer granted parole

Belgium’s highest court yesterday released into a convent on strict parole the ex-wife and accomplice of paedophile serial killer Marc Dutroux.

Martin was jailed for complicity in the deaths of two girls found starved in a locked cellar

An AFP correspondent at the country’s federal Court of Appeal in the capital Brussels said judges ruled shortly after 4 p.m. that the grounds for two appeals, one led by the father of a victim and the other by prosecutors, were inadmissible or unfounded.

After weighing up submissions given by plaintiffs and Martin’s lawyer in the morning, the court said 52-year-old Michelle Martin was free to exit her prison in the south of the city immediately, after greenlighting a July 31 decision by a regional court to free her 16 years into a 30-year jail sentence.

That ruling had provoked anger among victims’ families, prompted demonstrations around the convent and triggered a debate in Belgium about imposing full-term jail sentencing for crimes judged the most serious.

A previous attempt to place Ms Martin in a French convent also fell foul of French authorities’ fears over public order.

One submission was a joint one from Jean-Denis Lejeune, whose daughter Julie was one of the couple’s victims, and Laetitia Delhez, who survived a kidnap ordeal. The other was advanced by the prosecutor, Claude Michaux, for the western Mons court that decided to release Ms Martin.

Paedophile Dutroux was jailed for life in 2004 for the kidnap and rape in the 1990s of six young and teenage girls, and the murder of the four of them who died.

Ms Martin was sentenced the same year for helping him hold victims prisoner, and for complicity in the deaths of two girls, found starved to death in a locked cellar.

The former schoolteacher, who married Dutroux in 1983 and had three children by him before their divorce in 2003, had also served time in the 1980s for previous kidnappings.

Under the successful parole ruling, a fifth bid for freedom, she is to “keep her distance” from relatives of victims.

She will not become a nun, but must observe total discretion vis-a-vis the outside world.

A sister at the convent in Malonne in central Belgium that is to take her in said at the time of the initial court decision that it had accepted the “challenge” of taking Ms Martin in, while adding “our hearts as women are troubled”.