Dr Massa and Mr Hyde....
Belgian Official's Death Puts Top Cases On Hold
Prosecutor in Pedophile Case Kills Himself
By Barry James International Herald Tribune
BRUSSELS - The death of a top prosecutor, apparently as the result of suicide, threw doubts Thursday over Belgium's two most prominent criminal investigations and forced Belgians to revisit some of the darker moments of their country's recent history.
The official, Hubert Massa, the chief prosecuting attorney in Liege, was in overall charge of the investigation into the alleged pedophile murders committed by Marc Dutroux and the lead investigator into the 1991 gangland-style slaying of Andre Cools, the Socialist party boss in Wallonia.
Investigators said that after meeting the new minister of justice, Marc Verwilghen, Mr. Massa returned to his home in Verviers in southern Belgium, where on Tuesday, he closeted himself in his study and shot himself.
They said he left no letter or any other clues. In his early fifties, he was the father of three children.
His immediate superior, Anne Thilly, the district attorney for the Liege region, officially described the death as a suicide. Mr. Massa was standing in for her at the meeting with Mr. Verwhilgen, which the ministry described as a courtesy encounter with Belgium's five district attorneys. Justice Ministry sources said nothing contentious was raised at the meeting.
Mr. Verwilghen led the parliamentary inquiry into the Dutroux affair, which was highly critical of the glacial pace and inefficiency with which various police units and the judiciary had carried out investigations, and their disregard of the plight of the victims' families.
Mr. Massa was the chief prosecutor in another major criminal case, the murder of two young people, Marc Kistemann, 21, and Corine Malmendier, 17. Two drifters killed them seven years ago on Thursday and murdered another man the following day.
Mr. Massa obtained the conviction and death sentences for the killers at their first trial in Liege. They were sentenced to life imprisonment at hard labor at a retrial in 1996 after the abolishment of capital punishment.
Francois Kistemann, the father of Marc Kistemann, described Mr. Massa as a courageous and exemplary prosecutor with a deep sense of compassion for the families of the victims.
''He was as solid as a rock,'' Mr. Kistemann said in an interview.
He said Mr. Massa had always given strong moral support to the Marc and Corine Association, which the parents set up to help trace missing children in Belgium.
Corine's father, Jean-Pierre Malmendier, won election as a senator last month, pledging to shed light on the murky Dutroux affair.
Mr. Malmendier said he was ''stupefied'' to learn of the death of Mr. Massa, whom he remembered as a ''strict, but balanced and humane'' prosecutor.
Observers said that Mr. Massa's death could delay the Cools and Dutroux investigations since it would take a new prosecutor time to study the dossiers, each running thousands of pages.
However, a senior federal prosecutor, Michel Bourlet, said it was still hoped to start the Dutroux trial next year. Mr. Bourlet said Mr. Massa was ''an extremely balanced magistrate,'' whose death was a serious loss for the prosecution.
Mr. Dutroux, a convicted rapist, is in a maximum security jail in Arlon awaiting trial for the kidnapping of six young girls, the gruesome murder of four of them, the murder of an accomplice and a general charge of criminal conspiracy.
Mr. Dutroux was a key member of an international pedophile ring, which has been speculatively linked in the press here with members of Belgian high society and the political class.
The unusually slow pace of the investigation has led to allegations, by the parents of the murdered girls among others, of an official cover-up.
''Do you find it normal that after three years of investigation we do not know who kidnapped our children and why,'' said Jean-Denis Lejeune, the father of one of the girls. ''The worst is that the more they say that things are going to be cleared up, the more obscure they become.''
Mr. Massa was in charge of the Cools murder investigation from the beginning. Two Tunisian hit men have been sentenced in their own country to long terms of imprisonment, but other suspects accused in the case are either at liberty or, in the case of one, in jail in Italy on a narcotics conviction.
Observers say the Cools investigation could shed light on the extent of Mafia activity in Wallonia, Belgium's poorer, French-speaking southern half. The case was not expected to come to trial before next year, although this could now be delayed as a result of Mr. Massa's death.
___________________
iht.com
Charles, the funny thing about that story is the way IHT reporter Barry James has candidly linked Massa's suicide to the Dutroux case, rather than the Cools' assassination one... And that's indeed how many people have likely analyzed it, including myself. However, our brave local media have never hinted at such a connection: Massa's suicide has always been referred to the other, "politically-correct", affair, that is the Cools assassination. But nobody's fooled: former PM Andre Cools was iced by other Socialist topsiders because he threatened to blow the lid off several murky deals....
Charles, we're told we live in a world where there're the good guys and the bad guys, the brave supercops and the damn godfellas, the honorable and the slimy, the creme-de-la-creme and the underworld, etc... but what if the alleged good guys turned out to be the worst criminals?? How do you prosecute a magistrate? How do you indict a bishop? How do you arrest a colonel? How do you vilify a multi-billion-dollar-company's CEO? How do you remove your secret service's corrupt chief? Err... well, of course, there's always the "revolutionary way" --but what else?
Take your time,
Gus.
PS - My current read: Perdido Street Station, a gothic novel by China Mi‚ville.
rambles.net |
