FACING a wave of public anger at the leniency of Belgian law regarding convicted child sex offenders, the Justice Minister yesterday pledged to make it harder for them to be released from jail early.
A prison commission will now be established to look at all these sort of delicate files. Only if there is unanimous agreement could there possibly be an early release," Mr Stefaan de Clerck said.
He was the first member of government to speak out after the bodies of two abducted eight year old girls, Melissa Russo and Julie Lejeune, were found buried in a garden at the weekend.
Police were led to the bodies by Mr Marc Dutroux (39), a father of three who is charged with kidnapping two other girls.
There was a national outcry when it was revealed that Mr Dutroux was a convicted child sex offender who had been released 10 years early in 1992 from a 13 year jail sentence.
There were calls for the reinstatement of the death penalty erased from statute books in June after years lying in disuse - or at the least for convicted sex offenders to be refused the possibility of early release.
The final decision to release Mr Dutroux early was made by the then Justice Minister, Mr Melchior Wathelet, after he was advised three in favour, two against by those involved in the case. One of those who opposed his release is known to be the public prosecutor in the case.
"Magistrates will also have to be integrated into the system of releasing people," Mr De Clerck said.
Yesterday, Mr Wathelet, who was reported to be on holiday in Italy, bore much of the brunt of the public anger.
Mr Dc Clerck noted that improvements to the system to deal with sex offenders were introduced with a new law in 1995 but some aspects of this law had still not been implemented.
The minister also promised more centres in prisons to deal with sex offenders, taking the total to six.
Referring to Mr Dutroux's particular case, Mr De Clerck said it was not the decision to release him early which had been at fault, but the administrative procedures that led to it.
He said that because of professional secrecy rules, "there was no psychiatric report as such" on Mr Dutroux available for those assessing whether he was safe to be released into society.
While offering his and the government's condolences to the families of the dead girls, Mr De Clerck rejected their parents' accusations that the police had not taken seriously the possibility of a paedophile element in their disappearance.
"The proof was that several searches were made at the houses of people susceptible to those kinds of things," Mr De Clerck said.
But he said he would appoint a judge from the city of Liege to assess whether any mistakes had been made by the investigators, who had searched Mr Dutroux's house several times once as recently as last week - to no avail.
Some IS children have disappeared in Belgium in the past six years. Seven have now been found dead, two have been rescued and six are still missing. Police have refused to speculate on the existence of a major paedophile ring in Belgium, with Mr Dutroux at its centre.
