by HMKGrey » Wed Jun 28, 2006 1:48 pm
<!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Belgian police find girls' bodies</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br><br>The bodies of two young stepsisters who disappeared in the eastern city of Liege three weeks ago have been found, Belgian police have confirmed.<br><br>Chief prosecutor Cedric Visart de Bocarme said Stacy Lemmens, seven, and Nathalie Mahy, 10, were murdered.<br><br>The girls disappeared during a street party. Their bodies were found 400 metres from where they were last seen.<br><br>The case has revived Belgians' memories of Marc Dutroux's paedophile killings, which included two girls from Liege.<br><br>Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt is due to address the nation about the case.<br><br>A suspect turned himself in to police two weeks ago, but has denied any involvement in the girls' disappearance.<br><br> It's absurd that it took them more than two weeks to find them when they were so close by<br>Andre Deaelcominette,<br>Liege resident<br><br>Police discovered the body of Stacy Lemmens under a manhole cover near railway lines at 1100 (0900 GMT).<br><br>A short while later, Nathalie Mahy's body was discovered some 20 metres from her stepsister.<br><br>Post-mortem examinations are due to be carried out to determine the girls' causes of death, although Liege prosecutor Anne Bourguinont said: "This can't be considered to be an accident."<br><br>Residents' questions<br><br>"The hunt for the culprit or culprits is now a priority and everything possible will be done to shed light on the case as soon as possible," Mr Visart de Bocarme told reporters.<br><br>He said "everything was done to find them alive", and they had refused to give up hope of a happy outcome.<br><br>"Unfortunately these hopes are today ruined by the discovery of the deceased, should I say murdered, children," he said.<br><br>But shocked residents of Liege's Saint Leonard neighbourhood, where the girls disappeared, are asking why it took the police so long to find the bodies.<br><br>"It's absurd that it took them more than two weeks to find them when they were so close by," Andre Deaelcominette told the French news agency, AFP.<br><br>The two girls were last spotted in the early hours of the morning near a cafe where their mother and father were attending a street party.<br><br>Magistrates on Tuesday granted police more time to question the suspect in the case, Abdellah Ait Oud, a convicted paedophile whose girlfriend works at the cafe.<br><br>Belgium was deeply shocked by the Marc Dutroux paedophile case, in which two girls from Liege disappeared in June 1995.<br><br>Their bodies were not found until a year later - in Dutroux's garden.<br><br>In 2004 Dutroux was found guilty of leading a gang that kidnapped and raped six girls in the mid-1990s, leading to the deaths of four of them.<br><br>Story from BBC NEWS:<br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/5124572.stm">news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-...124572.stm</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--> <p></p><i></i>
