‘No phone tapping’ during Dutroux trial

29 June 2004

BRUSSELS – Fears that certain magistrates working on the recent trial of child murderer Marc Dutroux had their portable telephones tapped are unfounded, investigators said on Tuesday.

Concerns about phone tapping were raised at the beginning of June by a journalist working for La Derniere Heure newspaper.

His suspicions were aroused when his home telephone rang and he found himself listening in on a mobile telephone conversation between two magistrates working on the Dutroux case.

He contacted the police who carried out an investigation into the incident.

But on Tuesday they said the phantom phone call happened because one of the magistrates had accidentally recorded the journalists telephone number in one of her mobile phones after he had contacted her but she had not replied.

The magistrate then called her colleague on another mobile phone but accidentally redialled the journalist at the same time, investigators added.

[Copyright Expatica 2004]

Subject: Belgian news