Belgian girls strangled, one raped [video report]

Stacy Lemmens (left) and Nathalie Mahy.

BRUSSELS - Belgium was yesterday trying to come to terms with a double child-murder that has shocked a nation, as a post-mortem revealed grim details of the last moments of two abducted stepsisters.

The bodies of seven-year-old Stacy Lemmens and 10-year-old Nathalie Mahy, were recovered in a storm drain alongside a railway line in Liege, not far from the spot from which they vanished almost three weeks ago.

Yesterday their parents were given results of an autopsy showing that both girls were strangled and that the elder child had been raped.

Identical coffins carrying the remains of the two girls left the city's medical institute yesterday bound for an undertaker's parlour.

Nathalie's funeral will take place tomorrow in private at Cointe; Stacy will be buried on Monday after a service at Sainte-Foy church where she was baptised.

With memories still fresh of the child-sex crimes committed by Marc Dutroux in the 1990s, Belgian police are under pressure to close the case quickly to end speculation that a paedophile ring remains in existence.

A team of 20 forensic scientists examined the bodies searching for proof to link the murders with the police's only suspect, Abdullah Aid Oud, a 38-year-old convicted child rapist who is being held in custody.

None had been made public last night and it was unclear how much scientific evidence had been recovered from the decomposing bodies which spent days immersed in water.

The prime suspect in the killings, who has already been charged with kidnapping the girls, was yesterday ordered to stay in custody. Aid Oud denies involvement and his lawyer has pressed for his release arguing that there is no proof against him.

But a court was yesterday convinced that there was sufficient circumstantial evidence to hold him.

This includes the fact that he was seen near the place from which the children disappeared, that he then shaved his head in an apparent effort to alter his appearance, that scratches were found on his body and that he has a record of child sex crimes.

The killings have provoked an emotional reaction in Liege which has special reasons to remember Dutroux's crimes.

In 1995, Dutroux snatched two eight-year-olds, Julie Lejeune and Melissa Russo, from Grace-Hollogne, near Liege, and held them for months in the basement of one of his homes in Marcinelle, near Charleroi.

Locked in their underground cell, the two schoolfriends starved to death while Dutroux served a prison sentence for another offence.

Yesterday mourners laid flowers and placed candles near the spot where the remains of Stacy and Nathalie were discovered.

Psychologists were on provided to help the friends of the two girls come to terms with their deaths.

At Stacy's school Athenee de Vise, the head teacher, Catherine Maes, said: "We are going to do something together, so that the children can grieve. We let them cry, express anger, draw and give them a framework with which to look forward."

Children hung pictures, decorations and flowers from the windows of the school. Psychologists will be on standby over the summer holiday for the schoolchildren.

There were similar scenes at Nathalie's school, Jardin Botanique, where a minute's silence was held.

Nathalie and Stacy went missing at a street party in the rundown Saint-Leonard district at around 1.30am local time on June 10.

Ait Oud was seen near the two girls at the Aux Armuriers cafe where their parents were drinking. Released from prison last December Aid Oud is the boyfriend of an employee of the cafe where the girls were last seen alive.

- INDEPENDENT