Pedophile accomplice gets early release
Source: Agencies |
August 29, 2012, Wednesday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
BELGIUM'S highest court granted conditional early release yesterday to one of the nation's most despised criminals, the accomplice and former wife of a pedophile and child killer, even though she let two of his victims starve to death.
The Court of Cassation ruled that no procedural errors were made by a lower court, which is allowing Michelle Martin to live in a convent after serving barely half her 30-year sentence for her part in the mid-1990s kidnappings, rapes and killings by her then-husband Marc Dutroux.
"The court rejects the appeals," Judge Albert Fettweis said of motions by the prosecutor's office and some families of the victims.
It was unclear when Martin would go to Malonne, where she will live in a Clarisse convent and, in the words of her lawyer, seek atonement for her crimes.
Martin depicted herself as a passive culprit of the psychopath Dutroux. But she is still blamed for aiding her husband as he went on a depraved and murderous spree, and she is particularly loathed for letting the two girls starve while Dutroux was imprisoned.
Dutroux, a convicted pedophile on parole at the time of the crimes, was arrested in 1996 and convicted eight years later of abducting, imprisoning and raping six girls between the summers of 1995 and 1996. He was also found guilty of murdering two of the six girls.
The Court of Cassation ruled that no procedural errors were made by a lower court, which is allowing Michelle Martin to live in a convent after serving barely half her 30-year sentence for her part in the mid-1990s kidnappings, rapes and killings by her then-husband Marc Dutroux.
"The court rejects the appeals," Judge Albert Fettweis said of motions by the prosecutor's office and some families of the victims.
It was unclear when Martin would go to Malonne, where she will live in a Clarisse convent and, in the words of her lawyer, seek atonement for her crimes.
Martin depicted herself as a passive culprit of the psychopath Dutroux. But she is still blamed for aiding her husband as he went on a depraved and murderous spree, and she is particularly loathed for letting the two girls starve while Dutroux was imprisoned.
Dutroux, a convicted pedophile on parole at the time of the crimes, was arrested in 1996 and convicted eight years later of abducting, imprisoning and raping six girls between the summers of 1995 and 1996. He was also found guilty of murdering two of the six girls.
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