AMSTERDAM — The public prosecutor demanded in Lelystad Court on Tuesday jail terms of up to 14 years against six suspects accused of kidnapping three female asylum seekers, raping them and forcing them to have sex with animals for a pornographic video.

Belgian man Philip M. is facing a 14-year jail term, his brother Marino 12 years jail and Rotterdam man E. van E. is facing a 10-year jail sentence. The prosecutor also demanded that co-suspects Lorencia F., Rose B. and Gerda de V. be jailed for eight years, six years and 18 months respectively.

The trial started on Monday and the six suspects, aged between 24 and 46, are charged with kidnapping, rape, human smuggling and membership of a criminal gang. It had previously been reported that only five suspects were on trial.

The three men were arrested in April 2004 after three North African asylum seekers were kidnapped in Belgium and forced to have sex with men and animals in a farm shed in the north-eastern Dutch village of Kraggenburg. The sex acts were filmed.

One of the three women managed to escape and alert police. Two of them are now demanding compensation of EUR 100,000. They claim to be strongly traumatised and suffer from panic attacks. The women have since returned to Belgium.

The prosecutor claims the three women escaped a brutal death in which they would have been disfigured and murdered for a “snuff” film. The gang had been planning the week after one of the women escaped to carry out the murders, the prosecutor said.

The Dutchman — who held the lease for the shed — and Philip M. have either denied any guilt or have refused to give testimony to the court.

The trial has been postponed since July last year because victims and witnesses needed to give police statements and the main suspects were to undergo a psychiatric examination in the Dutch judiciary’s observation clinic, the Pieter Baan Centrum in Utrecht.

The defence’s closing argument will be heard on Thursday.

[Copyright Expatica News 2005]

Subject: Dutch + Belgian news