Source(s):
X2 (PV 118.381, December 13, 1996: "X2 met Dumont several times at the Platos in Ixelles. She also met Marnette, Pelos and Zimmer (PJ BXL) there. It is a club for orgies, occasionally with consenting minors participating. Dumont went there with boys. Dumont and Marnette know each other well (partners in crime).");
Nathalie W. (accused Marnette of being involved in raping her, together with Claudio de Balanguer, a sidekick of her Prince de Merode);
PV 116.065, November 5, 1996: "31/10/96 JC Thomas (Gendarmerie) is contacted by an anonymous witness. The witness is outraged by the manipulation of public opinion by the Press (DH). He speaks about the article 'Ras-le-Bol'. Marnette himself has participated in partouzes with Nihoul during which coke was available. It is about a manipulation of Georges Marnette (PJ) with the complicity of [Gilbert] Dupont (DH). Marnette is again in contact with Forgeot and Bara [managers of the Dolo and Les Atrebates]. Marnette is protected. He kept in contact with Paulus de Chatelet [Véronique Paulus de Chatelet; governor of law of Brussels]. Affirmations can be confirmed by Guy Jadot (ex-informant of Marnette and Reyniers [apparently just as corrupt as Marnette]) and by Salvatore Barega...";
PV 100.835, February 21, 1997 (marked in red in the summary): "The informer learns from a journalist that a press leak was organized for 21 or 22/02/97. An article has to appear in La Derniere Heure about the murder at the champignonière [Christine Van Hees, which was reopened by X1]. The article has to be written by a journalist [Gilbert Dupont] who is a friend of Marnette. NDLR [note de la rédaction]: see declarations of X2 about the intervention of Marnette in this dossier. According to journalist from the Gent area, Marnette and his journalist friend took part together in orgies of which photographs would exist.";
PV 151.077, April 15, 1997: "Forgeot [owner Dolo and Les Atrebates; alleged rapist] says that Marnette, Collignon and Reyniers [Reyniers] frequented Les Atrebates.";
Additional: November 8, 1996, PV 116.064: "Hearing of Guy Jadot. He was an informant to Marnette-Reyniers-De Vroom. He participated in orgies at Club O and Atrebates. ... He learned about the relationship between Marnette-Nihoul-Forgeout-Bara. ... Marnette and Reyniers had an accident with a service vehicle after an orgy. They said they were in pursuit and have produced a false PV justifying their intervention."
Police commissioner in Brussels and today the number two in the justice department of the federal police in Brussels. Good friend of Jean-Paul Dumont (accused of being a violent child abuser and had connections all over Belgium's underworld), who in turn is a good friend of Nihoul (accused of being a violent child abuser). Has many contacts in the extreme right and the circle of the late Paul Vanden Boeynants (accused of being a violent child abuser). Interrogated WNP Nazi terrorists Paul Latinus (DIA-NATO-PIO agent), Eric Lammers (Wackenhut; pedophilia found on his and his friend's computer in 2004)and Marcel Barbier (Wackenhut-PIO-EIM agent, and Latinus' right hand in WNP)in late 1983, who admitted to having committed two murders. For some reason, they had been given orders to spill the beans. Recruited Latinus as an informant. Marnette was called by Latinus several hours before he was suicided in April 1984 with some information about a drug case he had stumbled upon. In May 1988, Marnette expressed his conviction that Latinus had been murdered by someone unknown.
March 4, 1997, De Tijd
'Nihoul wekt ook de aandacht van de Bende-commissie op' ('Nihoul also draws the attention of the Gang-commission'): "The facts that were gathered about the ballets were so serious that a judicial investigation was opened. Soon it turned out that the dossier was being torpedoed. Glen Audenaert of the police was among those who came to find that out. He had become in the possession of audiotapes with witness testimonies about the ballets, but these mysteriously disappeared. There are suspicions that they were stolen by his superior Marnette."
March 4, 1997, Humo Magazine
'Extreem-rechts en de Roze Balletten: als de politie zwijgt' ('The extreme-right and the Pink Ballets: when the police is silent'): "Andre Rogge, former private detective and handyman for the Brussels judicial police, warns: the pedophile investigations around Michel Nihoul & co., headed by Prosecuter of the King Michel Bourlet, is being threatened by infiltrants with intentions that are not good. It is about Georges Marnette and Yves Zimmer, commissioners of the police, who in the 1980s were involved with right-extremists and suspect individuals in the sex industry. According to Rogge, these policemen still have ties with their former buddies from Brussels, in which politics, prostitution, the extreme-right, and organized crime flow effortlessly into each other, and they will do anything to protect their friends, whose names undoubtedly will come to the surface in the investigations of Neufchateau. ...
As a private detective in search of missing children [Rogge] has for years been involved in investigating organized pedophilia. And before he became private detective, Rogge himself was part of the Belgian criminal circuit [but not involved in violence, prostitution, or pedophilia]. ... Rogge eventually completely left the criminal circuit when he began to understand in what kind of sordid business his employer Frans Reyniers, the now sidelined and convicted head commissioner of the Brussels police, ... tried to get him involved with. ... The risk of getting blackmailed in the prostitution and pedophile circuits is enormously high: there are many policemen, magistrates, and even journalists who have to do what the sex milieu tells them to do because they were unable to keep their hands to themselves. ...
A lawyer who wishes to remain anonymous, but who knew the milieu around Dossogne in the 1980s very well, confirmed the opinion of Rogge about commissioner Zimmer. The lawyer: 'Politically Zimmer and Dossogne were very close. I don't know if Zimmer has ever been an official member of the group of Dossogne, the Front de la Jeunesse or of the Front's splinter group Westland New Post (WNP), but he certainly involved himself with those extreme groups.' ... Andre Rogge: 'Dossogne, Zimmer, and Marnette were living in perfect symbiosis. In 1986 I found out that the right-extremist Francis Dossogne and Georges Vandycke had even been given access to the central computer of the police. They had the approval of Marnette and Zimmer to look up any information. Unbelievable! Zimmer was later questioned about that; he claimed that he had only given permission to Dossogne and Vandycke to play videogames on the computer. Oh well.' ... [two weeks ago] you could read yourself that lawyer [Jean-Paul] Dumont himself said about his friend Marnette that he had been a member of the extreme-right Westland New Post of the in 1984 found dead Paul Latinus. ... [Article goes on to describe how Marnette gained control and manipulated an investigation in 1984 in cooperation with Paul Latinus to create a controversy in order to stop the investigations of State Security in the extreme right. They asked a few questions to Marnette and he was completely unable to answer them.] ...
Andre Rogge: 'Where did Reyniers celebrate his promotion at the time? At the home of [Sonia] Camps. Zimmer, Marnette, and Reyniers were there with the pimps Vandycke and Gilissen. That was a circle of friends. Pictures have been made, which now can be found at the Brussels Court. ... Sonia Camps was a madam who came from the milieu of legendary call girl-queens as Lydia Montaricourt and Fortunato Israel and operated a network in Brussels in which prostitues and young schoolgirls could be found. ... Pierre-Paul Derycke, the bos of the notorious Jonathan bar, also was an informant of Zimmer. Zimmer once introduced me to him. And Marnette literally visits every Brussels whorehouse, including the Dolo and the 124 in the Atrebaten Street of Michel Nihoul. That man was unstoppable. I was able look into some of the dossiers about him, in which prostitues accuse him of intimidating and blackmailing them. Now I'm aware of course that the sexmilieu has the habit to neutralise policemen who walk in the way by falsely accusing them. But in case of Marnette there are just so many dossiers... The Brussels Court at the very least had to try and find out if it is true what is in those files. The Brussels Court never did that. ... I'm just saying: you can be certain that these gentlemen are not in the Dutroux/Nihoul investigation to solve the case; only to protect their buddies.' ...
Two weeks ago you could read in Humo how [Marnette] tried to keep Jean-Paul Dumont out of the investigation. And there also was the Di Rupo affair: that was nothing more and nothing less than a diversion for the people when the former CEPIC-ers saw trouble around the corner. ... Bourlet doesn't know about all the other things Zimmer did in Brussels. Bourlet doesn't know about all the dirty business related to the sexmilieu in which Zimmer was involved. I do know about that. I was there, damned! Zimmer may not be a bad policeman now, but it was impossible for him to keep it in his pants, and that resulted in him ending up in situations about which he problably doesn't like to be reminded of. ... Will he bent for his old pals who can blackmail him, and do what Marnette has already done? Why does Bourlet allow such a risk factor to be part of his team?"
1989
In 1989, examining magistrate Freddy Troch was involved in an investigation into Group G and the claims of Martial Lekeu. Brussels police commissioners Georges Marnette and Frans Reyniers, both visitors of Les Atrebates and the Dolo, soon ran an internal investigation of Troch's investigation, followed by a complaint to examining magistrate Benoit Dejemeppe.
A year later, Troch reopened some of the Gang of Nijvel documents and began looking into its political connections. Two of the persons he became very interested in as a result were Frans Reyniers (Brussels police commissioner; assisted in the Gang of Nijvel investigation; later convicted criminal; regularly visited the Jonathan, Les Atrébates and later The Dolo, Nihoul's favorite hangouts, for orgies, sometimes involving minors)and Baron de Bonvoisin. Troch was warned and subsequently kicked off the case by Melchior Wathelet, a violent child abuser together with Baron de Bonvoisin and Paul Vanden Boeynants, according to X1. Dejemeppe was a protege of Wathelet, accused by the late Count Yann of involvement in drugs and pedophilia networks.
September 1989
Congressman Hugo Coveliers, secretary of the special investigating committee tasked with evaluating the way gangsterism and terrorism is combated in Belgium (1988-1990), to Humo magazine (1989, Hugo Gijsels (has written for Humo and De Morgen), 'De Bende & Co', p. 133-134): "Imagine, everywhere you hear that story about a blackmail dossier in which organizations of the extreme right are in the possession of pictures and videos on which a number of prominent people in and around Brussels have sex with with young girls; minors it is said. The existence of this dossier has always been vehemently denied. Until it was proven that testimonies and videos of this affair indeed were in the possession of the police services.
An officer of the judicial police (Marnette, H.G.) denied the existence of these videos, while afterwards this person's superior admitted that they did exist, that they were kept with the judicial police in Brussels, but that they were completely worthless. Strange, because this stuff needs to be deposited with the registrar and not be kept at some police service. Subsequently, examining magistrate Jean-Marie Schlicker confirms that this dossier does indeed exist, but that he wishes not to give any testimonies about it. The at first non-existing dossier turns out to exist. The videos without substance then turn out to be interesting enough after all to be handed over to the examining magistrate tasked with the investigation into the Gang of Nijvel. But this person subsequently is afraid to testify about that! What do you think that has been going on here?" In August 1996, Marnette volunteered to come to Neufchateau in the aftermath of the Dutroux arrest as a specialist in sexual affairs. Following are examples of his peculiar role in the investigation.
February-March 1995
After the convicted paedophile Jean-Paul Raemaekers began testifying about child abuse networks in Belgium and how high-level officials were involved, Marnette and Raemaekers' lawyer, Jean-Paul Dumont, tried to gain control over Raemaekers. PV 115.417, October 19, 1996: "Raemaekers interview - Period of 20/02 to 15/03/95. At the time of the investigation of the BSR 3/SRC, Raemaekers had signaled to his lawyers that he was going to give information on networks of child molesters. Lawyers = JP Dumont, Marc Depaus and Geuninkx. Dumont wanted to entrust the investigation to the judicial police [in which Marnette is commissioner in Brussels] to screen the information. Dumont intervened with Marnette who is "his good friend". Marnette sent two men to the jail to audition Raemaekers on this topic. Lawyer Depaus came with them. The evidence had to be provided to the judicial police via Depaus after having been filtered by Dumont."
When the prosecutor of the king in Brussels, Benoit Dejemeppe (accused of having been involved in the trafficking of drugs and children; his mentor, Melchior Wathelet, is accused of being a violent child abuser), privately inquired about the arrest and evidence against Annie Bouty (accused of being a violent child abuser; Nihoul's ex-partner), he did this through Marnette (accused of being a child abuser). Dejemeppe didn't just "inquire out of personal interest", as he defended himself, he also recommended that Bouty's dossier be moved out of the pedophilia dossier and into the car fraud dossier.
In his first week at Neufchateau, Marnette went to Connerotte and presented him with a picture from the collection of Jean-Paul Raemaekers, a convicted paedophile, on which a man could be seen who vaguely resembled Dutroux. Before giving in to Marnette's request to interview Raemaekers, Connerotte had other people take a look at the picture, who concluded that the photo in question had been made in the 1970s when Dutroux was too young to look like the man in the picture. Also, the man on the picture could be heard speaking Dutch in the full video, a language not spoken by Dutroux. Immediately suspicions arose by Bourlet and Connerotte that Marnette had a hidden agenda. A BOB officer later commented: "The motive behind it was clear. Just as more than a year before, in March 1995, he wanted to gain control over Raemaekers, preferably by interviewing him himself. Why we don't know. But when you see what Marnette did a short time later with Elio Di Rupo, then at the very least we have a strong suspicion."
Since September 1996, Jean-Paul Raemaekers (X1 knew about him) testified to the BOB about some of the things he knew. His stories ultimately became responsible for the extended digs in Jumet, which investigators like Connerotte, Bourlet and De Baets immediately saw as another red herring, not only for them, but also for the public. Connerotte didn't pay attention to Raemaekers, but after he was kicked off the Dutroux investigation over the Spaghetti affair in mid October, Langlois made Raemaekers one of his top priorities. At the same time Langlois did everything he could to discredit the X-File witnesses.
Interrogators of Raemaekers, who claimed he passed through the stories of his cell mate Guy Focant, failed to notice several rather obvious contradictions in his story. They also failed to notice that Raemaekers took info from his other cell mate, Francis Debuisson, and used it in his own made up stories. Since October 19, Raemaekers, allegedly through Focant, claimed that Elio Di Rupo and Jean-Pierre Grafe protected pedophiles and were involved in the network themselves. This was two days before Olivier Trusgnach returned to Belgium and became involved with Marnette. Marnette then became responsible for the "leak" in which Di Rupo and Grafe were publicly accused of pedophilia (described below). The digs in Jumet, where according to Focant/Raemaekers a number of victims of Dutroux could be found, were finally cancelled in May 1997.
Summer 1996
In the summer of 1996, the 22 year old Olivier Trusgnach fled to London after having stolen from his employer a load of pricey silverware. As a gay prostitute several years before he had had sex with government officials, the most prominent of them Elio Di Rupo (Parti Socialiste), vice-premier of Belgium in 1996; and Jean-Pierre Grafe (PSC), Walloon minister of Higher Education in 1996, not to mention once a member of CEPIC and a friend of Vanden Boeynants. Trusgnach was soon tracked down in London, but was not arrested. It is known that in early September 1996, Marnette received information from inspector Gregory Antipine that Trusgnach, as a former gay prostitute, had high level officials among his clients. For some reason Trusgnach came back to Belgium on October 21 to talk to the police about his sexual relationships with above-mentioned government officials.
However, in his October 22 testimony there's nothing incriminating to be found as he stated that he was 19 years old at the time of the sexual contacts and wasn't forced to do anything. Marnette was almost immediately informed of the arrest of Trusgnach and had contacted officers involved in the case by October 22. On October 24, Trusgnach suddenly claimed that he was 17 years old when the homosexual contacts took place between him and Di Rupo and Grafe, which still wouldn't have been illegal. Then the next morning Trusgnach began claiming to have been even younger, only 15, and reported to his interviewers that he had been informed by the judicial police in Brussels (Marnette & Co.; date of this deal?) that if he would "cooperate" (in their crusade against Di Rupo) the charges against him for stealing silverware would be dropped. In the mean time, Marnette had written a PV about an informant (whom Marnette is said to have put under pressure) who claimed that two homosexuals, Laurent V. and Johan P., were in the possession of paedophile videos, and that Trusgnach "would have more information" (apparently, Marnette was aware that the informant knew both Di Rupo and Trusgnach).
On October 28, Marnette and the two October 24 interviewers of Trusgnach, Antipine and Struys, put everything they "had learned" in a PV, which included accusations of pedophilia (as Trusgnach apparently was only 15) against Di Rupo, Grafe and a number of other mid-level government officials and businessmen. A few weeks went by with nothing happening, except that the report somehow got leaked to journalists. On November 15, various newspapers thought they had done enough fact checking on the leaked document and informed the police that its contents would be discussed in the November 16 newspaper editions. At this point, magistrates and police commissioners all of a sudden decided that the home of the two homosexuals, Laurent V. and Johan P., needed to be searched before these two would get rid of any evidence that they might possess. Then another peculiar decision was made: instead of the Judicial Police doing the raid, which had been working on both cases in its entirety, it was decided that the De Baets and team, of the BOB, had to search the place of Laurent V. and Johan P. De Baets was forced to cancel his vacation and had to telephone all night to even get an idea of what this case was all about. In the following weeks, newspapers spread the suspicion that De Baets and his team, who would soon find themselves in the middle of the X-File witnesses debate, had been responsible for the entire "anti-gay witch hunt" against Di Rupo and Grafe.
Predictably, no evidence at all was found by De Baets against Laurent V. and Johan P. It also soon became obvious to anyone that Trusgnach, as a thief, con man and someone who kept altering his testimony, was about the most unreliable witness imaginable. November 26, 1996, The Independent, 'Gays under pressure in Belgium's moral backlash; Anger over child murders switches to Belgium's gays': "In spite of the threat to the government should his allegations prove true, and in spite of all the pages of lurid allegations printed in the Belgian press, not even the police have bothered to establish whether Oliver T was under 16, the age of consent, when he allegedly had sex with the Deputy Prime Minister. And nobody seems to care. Oliver T is a "victim" - whatever his age - and a new, and potent symbol of moral corruption at the heart of the state... Belgium seems determined to find the "guilty man". The "moral" right is on a new crusade... The gay community all over Belgium is on the alert. Political leaders of the extreme right Vlaams Blok party and the conservative Catholic parties are targeting them, they say."
Michel Bourlet, Jean-Marc Connerotte, the team of De Baets, and even inspector Gregory Antipine all came to the conclusion that Marnette and associates had purposely manipulated and woven together the cases of Olivier Trusgnach and the two homosexuals. One reason cited was to discredit the team of De Baets that was working on the soon-to-be-very-controversial X-Files, and any revelations from these X witnesses that might accidentally hit the press. Another reason was to briefly "verify" the rumors of high level involvement in the Dutroux-Nihoul network, only to have them discredited again. A third reason might have been to remind high level officials to support the cover up, as their name might appear in the newspapers next (Di Rupo and Grafe had never publicly mentioned they were homosexuals, although it was known at the clubs they were "hunting" for boys).
At some point Di Rupo said to journalist Alain Gerlache: "I think that what happened to me might have served to cover up things in this country that are much worse." Examining magistrate Laffineur, tasked with finding the source of the earlier-mentioned leak, accused Marnette of having been responsible for the leak. Marnette denied however, and was never prosecuted. Coincidentally, Marnette's seemingly honest subordinate, inspector Gregory Antipine, decided to hang himself on August 14, 1999. Interestingly, there were other dossiers against Grafe (and some also say Di Rupo) with far more serious accusations of pedophilia. But these dossiers were thrown out together with the Trusgnach dossier, and have never been properly investigated.
BOB officers Eric Eloir and Luc Delmartino have stated that they suspect that Georges Marnette worked together with his allegedly good friend Gilbert Dupont, a journalist of La Derniere Heure, in leaking certain information aimed at discrediting the whole Dutroux and X-witnesses investigation. Patrick De Baets stated that the whole Di Rupo affair not only was an effort to discredit his team and the X witnesses, and to get the pressure off Nihoul, but also to warn politicians to stay in line.
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