Jean-Claude Van Espen

Jean-Claude Van Espen was an investigating judge (juge d'instruction) in Brussels. In the 1980s he directed the judicial investigation into the murder of Christine Van Hees, killed and partly burned in the disused mushroom farm at Auderghem in 1984. When the statements of the anonymous witness X1, Regina Louf, led to the case being reopened, the Brussels file, referred to as instruction 64/85 in the gendarmerie's correspondence with him, was returned at the end of January 1997 to the same judge.¹ The gendarme Aimé Bille, assigned to it from the team of Patrick De Baets, found that the earlier investigation under Van Espen had "multiple gaps."²

The Commission and the Neufchâteau Team

The Belgian parliamentary commission of inquiry into the Marc Dutroux affair asked its councillor-investigator, Marique, to look for protection mechanisms for Jean-Michel Nihoul and Dutroux in the Van Hees case, after an anonymous witness had linked Nihoul and Annie Bouty to it. When Marique spoke with investigators of the Neufchâteau antenna, the commission learned that Van Espen "was annoyed" by the contact, and it recorded its astonishment at "the violent reaction of the investigating judge." At a coordination meeting of the magistrates handling the related files on May 22, 1997, he asked that the college of prosecutors-general be seized of the question of what attitude magistrates and investigators should adopt when invited by the commission.¹

On June 22, 1997, Van Espen withdrew his confidence from the antenna's team and asked the Brussels gendarmerie to restructure it "to avoid any risk of pollution" of the investigation, ordering the suspension of "all investigative acts requested by my office or announced on initiative" and stating that he would continue the investigation provisionally without the gendarmerie's help. The commission noted that the team had by then carried out some 250 of his apostilles without any observation from him on their quality. He and the procureur du Roi of Ghent declined to work further with the team, which was removed from the antenna in August 1997; he later asked to be relieved of the investigation. In its report of February 16, 1998, the commission concluded that "the Brussels investigating judge gave particular, in fact disproportionate, attention to the contacts between the councillor-investigator of the commission of inquiry and certain investigators."¹

Press Reports

In 2002 The Observer reported that a Belgian journalist had revealed about two years earlier "the close relationship between Judge Van Espen and Nihoul and his then wife": that as a lawyer Van Espen had represented Nihoul's wife, that his sister was godmother of Nihoul's child, and that he had resigned as judge of the Van Hees investigation in early 1998 "after his relationship with Nihoul was exposed." The commission's report of February 1998 does not name Van Espen in connection with any tie to Nihoul; it records that Nihoul had several times tried to make investigators believe he was protected by a Brussels investigating judge, "(ex-)brother-in-law of a former lawyer," and found "qu'il n'en était rien" (that there was nothing to it).³¹

On April 23, 1998, the prosecutors-general of Antwerp, Ghent and Brussels closed the files opened on Louf's testimony.² The Van Hees murder was never solved.²