BRUSSELS – French serial killer Michel Fourniret is mentally fit to stand trial for his crimes, it was reported on Friday.

The 62-year-old carpenter, who is accused of killing 10 people in Belgium and France between 1987 and 2001, was examined by psychiatrists over the summer on the order of a Belgian magistrate.

Dinant prosecutor Arnoud d’Aspremont Lynden told Le Soir the psychiatric report confirmed Tourniret was responsible for his actions and therefore did not need to be taken to a mental institution.

It looks likely now that Fourniret, who newspapers have dubbed ‘the Ogre of the Ardennes’ and ‘the French Dutroux’, will face trial in Reims because most of his crimes were committed in France.

He has admitted to nine of the murders, those of eight girls and women and of a French male motorist, who he said he shot for money.

Among his victims was Belgian 12-year-old Elisabeth Brichet whose body was dug up in the Ardennes forest, on the Belgian-French border, at a chateau owned by Fourniret.

However, he continues to deny his wife Monique Oliver’s accusation that in 1993 he also murdered a young blonde woman, who the couple allegedly hired as an au pair.

Fourniret has claimed since his arrest in June that he did not kill anyone between 1990 and 2000.

Investigators are due to carry out searches for the body of the au pair at a lake at Rienne, near Sart-Custinne, where the couple used to live.

[Copyright Expatica 2004]

Subject: Belgian news