X-Dossier

The X-Dossier is the name given to the "related files" (dossiers connexes) opened in Belgium in 1996 and 1997 on the statements of anonymous witnesses, designated X1, X2 and so on, who came forward after the arrest of Marc Dutroux in August 1996. They began with a call to the free telephone line that the Neufchâteau investigating judge Jean-Marc Connerotte set up for information on child abuse: a Dutch-speaking woman, Tania, said a friend knew of grave abuse of children, and the gendarme Patrick De Baets, who happened to be in Connerotte's office, took the call. The friend was Regina Louf, X1. A special cell of the Brussels BSR under De Baets videotaped her interviews. At the same time a separate file was opened at Neufchâteau on Jean-Michel Nihoul, and a coordination cell, Obelix, was created at the Brussels judicial police under Eddy Suys, who told the parliamentary commission of inquiry in early 1997 that he was being obstructed and resigned.¹

The Testimony

The statements of the X witnesses led to the reopening of the unsolved murders of Christine Van Hees, Carine Dellaert, Veronique Dubrulle, Katrien de Cuyper and Hanim Ayse Mazibas.¹ X1 described childhood prostitution at a villa in Knokke-Heist run by her grandmother, Cecile Beernaert, and parties at which she said children were abused and killed, naming among others Paul Vanden Boeynants, members of the Lippens family, Melchior Wathelet, Baron Benoit de Bonvoisin, the lawyer Jean-Paul Dumont and Nihoul. The writer S. Dovey wrote that X2 had been the mistress of a magistrate and named Nihoul, Dumont and de Bonvoisin, that X3 alleged royal involvement, and that X4 identified friends of X1 in pornographic films. X1 led investigators to a factory site at Zaventem connected with ASCO Industries NV, where no physical evidence of films was found.² The testimonies were published in 1999 by the journalists Annemie Bulté, Douglas De Coninck and Marie-Jeanne Van Heeswyck as De X-dossiers: wat België niet mocht weten over de zaak-Dutroux.²

Removal of the Investigators

Connerotte was taken off the Dutroux case in October 1996 by the so-called "spaghetti ruling" and was replaced by Judge Jacques Langlois; the removal was followed by the White March in Brussels.¹³ The gendarme Aimé Bille, assigned to the Van Hees file, found that the original investigation under Judge Jean-Claude Van Espen had "multiple gaps." From April 1997 Duterme, who now directed the cell, had De Baets's colleagues reread the interviews for possible manipulation, and in the summer of 1997 Langlois ordered a complete rereading of all the related files and removed De Baets and Bille. The parliamentary commission's report of February 16, 1998, said it had first to be established whether the difficulties of the De Baets team and the Van Hees inquiry were linked to protection. A week later the rereading was closed. On April 23, 1998, the prosecutors-general of Antwerp, Ghent and Brussels found that "no proof could be found that Regina Louf could make any contribution whatsoever to these investigations" and closed the related files, except the main file before Langlois. A criminal inquiry into De Baets and Bille was dropped and a gendarmerie disciplinary inquiry acquitted them; they filed more than eighty complaints alleging falsified reports, but were kept from judicial police work. In October 2000 Senator Frans Lozie proposed a parliamentary inquiry into their removal.¹

At the Arlon trial in 2004, which ended with Nihoul's acquittal on the charges concerning the children, the investigating judge Langlois presented a case without a "grand complot."³ The Van Hees case was closed unsolved in 2014 under the statute of limitations.⁴