Suspects deny guilt in animal sex porn case

11 January 2005

AMSTERDAM — The two main suspects standing trial in a startling kidnapping and animal sex porn case have either denied involvement or have refused to give testimony to Lelystad Court.

The trial started on Monday and Rotterdam man E. van E. claimed the sex acts committed in the Dutch farm shed were “normal SM” acts. Belgian suspect P. M. refused to give any testimony.

The two men are accused of kidnapping asylum seeker women in Belgium, raping them and forcing them to have sex with animals while being filmed for a pornographic video.

The three North African women were kidnapped in Brussels at the end of March and the start of April last year and driven to the Dutch city of Almere. They were then taken to a farm shed in the north-eastern Dutch village of Kraggenburg.

The public prosecutor claims the women were gruesomely abused, threatened with weapons and assaulted. They were allegedly forced to have sex with two Rottweiler dogs and also with the suspects.

But one of the women managed to escape to a nearby farmhouse and alert police. The suspects were then arrested in April last year.

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.

But the start of the trial was further delayed on Monday, forcing the extension of the two-day trial out to three days. The public prosecutor was expected to reveal on Tuesday afternoon what sentences will be demanded against the suspects.

There are in total five suspects on trial in Lelystad, identified only as the Belgian brothers P. M., 36, and M. M., their Dutch girlfriends R. B., 43, and L. F., 24, and the Dutchman E. van E., of Rotterdam. They are charged with kidnapping, rape, human smuggling and membership of a criminal gang.

M. M., his girlfriend L. F. and R. B. deny kidnapping and raping the women. The three suspects instead claim the women voluntarily participated in the sex acts and pointed an accusing finger at Van E. and the eldest of the M. brothers.

Besides being kidnapped, raped and being subjected to brutal treatment, the victims also claim to be tied up, forced to have sex with animals. They were also told to bark like a dog and eat from animal dishes.

And it was revealed in a pre-trial hearing in July that the three women possibly escaped a brutal death in which they would have been dismembered in front of a camera and murdered for a “snuff” film. The gang had allegedly already made contact with people who were willing to carry out the crime.

The trial was continuing on Tuesday and will be rounded off on Thursday.

Subject: Dutch + Belgian news