Belgian Gladio and the Dutroux Affair

A Case Study in Deep Politics

I feel the need to preface this with two disclaimers. First of all, this essay contains content which can be considered extremely disturbing, including references to child abuse, sexual abuse, and other upsetting content. While I’ve done my best to present the facts in such a way that avoids going into graphic detail, I still want to give warning ahead of time. Second of all, I want to make clear that my main sources for this article have been NATO’s Secret Armies by Daniele Ganser and Joel van der Rejiden’s research into the Dutroux Affair for the Institute for the Study of Globalization and Covert Politics. I certainly can’t endorse every assertion made by these authors on other matters, but with regards to the subjects at hand I have found them to be well researched and backed by primary sources. With all that being said, let’s descend down the rabbit hole.

Marc Dutroux is, without exaggeration, likely the most infamous criminal in Belgian history. A child trafficker and serial abuser, Dutroux was initially convicted in 1989 for the kidnapping, violent abuse and sexual assault of five young girls and sentenced to thirteen years in prison only to be released after serving just three on the order of Belgian Minister of Justice Melchior Wathelet. In 1996, Dutroux would be arrested again on similar charges, having kidnapped and sexually abused a number of young girls who he forced to make pornographic videos. It was quickly discovered that Dutroux was responsible for the murders of four of the young girls they had kidnapped, as well as that Dutroux had murdered one of his accomplices, Bernanrd Weinstein. Along with Dutroux, several of his other accomplices would be arrested: Dutroux’s wife Michelle Martin, petty criminal Michel Levlievre, and most importantly, Brussels businessman and nightclub owner Jean-Michel Nihoul, who prior to this was already well known for both attending and arranging sex parties as well as being well connected to the upper echelons of Belgian politics.

Evidence quickly mounted that through Jean-Michel Nihoul, Dutroux’s child trafficking ring was connected to a number of government and law enforcement officials. Twenty three suspects, including nine police officers, would be detained and questioned in connection with this criminal conspiracy. Beyond these suspects, multiple victim-witnesses of Dutroux’s crimes would corroborate accusations of a number of prominent Belgian military officers, politicians, and nobility, including former Prime Minister Paul Vanden Boeynants, NATO Secretary General Willy Claes, and Melchior Wathelet, the man who had let Dutroux originally walk free. These victims, many of whom had been brought into the trafficking ring by family friends, also attested to a wider network of human trafficking being orchestrated by Dutroux and Nihoul that connected with the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and other European countries as well as the production and distribution of “snuff films” depicting the sexual abuse and murder of children. As sensational as these claims might seem, they were corroborated by multiple witnesses and line up with the existence of numerous videotapes kept by Dutroux containing recordings of the sexual assaults and torture he had carried out.

The implication that numerous members of the Belgian power elite were potentially complicit in a murderous child trafficking ring likely led to the numerous obstacles, delays, and setbacks in the case. Dutroux had originally been investigated by police who had received reports about him engaging in child kidnapping in 1995, with officers even hearing the cries of children from the basement only to dismiss them as coming from “outside.” During this search of Dutroux’s home, the police would retrieve over a hundred video tapes, many of which were never reviewed - with some being returned to Dutroux and later being “stolen” and others “disappearing” in police custody. After Dutroux’s arrest the investigating magistrate in the case, Jean-Marc Connerotte would be dismissed by the Belgian Supreme Court after having made a number of major breakthroughs. In the past, a similar incident occurred where he had made multiple arrests in connection to the assassination of left-leaning Walloon politician Andre Cools back in 1994 before being transferred off that case as well. Shortly after Connorette’s dismissal, approximately 300,000 Belgians - 3% of the national population - would take to the streets to protest the removal of the committed and popular magistrate from the case, the incompetence of the police which had allowed Dutroux to kill many of his victims, and the frequent obstructions to the investigation in what would be known as the White March.

It was abundantly clear that the Belgian government was engaged in a massive cover-up of the extent of the Dutroux case in order to protect the political and economic elite who were implicated, with officials going out of their way to delay the trial and avoid the inclusion of different pieces of evidence. During the initial few years of the investigation, several witnesses in the Dutroux case died under mysterious circumstances: among the strangest deaths were those of Jose Steppe, who was found dead two days before he was supposed to testify to the police with important information about Dutroux with Rohypnol in his asthma inhaler, Anna Konjevoda, whose body was found in the Meuse river, apparently having beaten and choked to death, some time after she had contacted the police about Dutroux’s connections to pornography rings in Eastern Europe, and Gina Pardaens, a social worker who worked with child pornography victims, claimed she had seen a snuff film in which an acquaintance of Michel Nihoul murdered a child, and had called the police saying she had been threatened with death via car accident shortly before dying in a car accident.

Dutroux would not go to trial until 2004, nearly eight years after his original arrest, where he asserted that he was a low level functionary in an extensive child-trafficking network, with Jean-Michel Nihoul being responsible for directing his kidnappings. Dutroux would be sentenced to life in prison, the maximum possible sentence for his crimes. Michel Nihoul, on the other hand, was acquitted of any involvement in child trafficking and instead sentenced to five years in prison for conspiracy and drug trafficking - only to be released after merely two years of imprisonment. This incredibly light sentencing makes sense in the context of who Nihoul knew: one of the judges initially involved in the Dutroux case, Jean-Claude Van Espen, was a close associate of Nihoul’s, and Jean-Michel Nihoul was also an informant for the Bijzondere Opsporings Brigade, a branch of the Belgian Gendarmerie that functioned as a rough equivalent to the American Federal Bureau of Investigations. Between this and the fact that many of the witnesses who implicated Nihoul also implicated the involvement of powerful politicians and officials, the Brussels businessman was given an absurdly light sentence. Only a few years after his release in 1999, Nihoul himself would tell the German newspaper Der Spiegel in 2001, “I control the government… everyone has compromising dossiers on one another, to be used as leverage in the right situation,” even offering off the record to provide a video tape of Belgium’s King Albert II assaulting a teenage girl for a six figure sum. Nihoul died a free man at the age of 78 in 2019.

Having gone over these horrific crimes and the high likelihood of a cover-up on the part of the government, it is time to go deeper by looking at how these crimes connect to the “deep politics'' of Belgium. Five important names, Paul Vanden Boeynants, Baron Benoit de Bonvoisin, Madani Bouhouche, Leon Francois, and Martial Lekeu were all either implicated in the Dutroux-Nihoul child abuse ring by victim-witnesses, or accused of child sexual abuse by sources whose testimonies aligned with the aforementioned victim-witnesses. What makes these names particularly interesting to us is that they also all have connections to the Belgian fascist underground. Paul Vanden Boeynants, the former Prime Minister of Belgium, was a member of the notoriously reactionary Catholic organization Opus Dei, a vocal supporter of NATO, and in 1969, would be one of the founders of the Cercle des Nations, a right-wing anti-communist and pro-NATO exclusive social club composed of a small number of elites who gave their public support to the dictatorships of Augusto Pinochet, Francisco Franco, and Antonio Salazar. It’s likely not a coincidence that over a dozen Cercles de Nations members would be implicated in the Dutroux Affair. Later in 1971, Boeynants would also found the Nouvel Europe Magazine, a publication that would serve as a platform for the organization of fascist paramilitary “NEM-Clubs.” In the foundation of both the Cercle des Nations and the Nouvel Europe Magazine, Boeynants had a partner in Baron Benoit de Bonvoisin, aka the “Black Baron,” another member of the Opus Dei who would play a vital role in fundraising for Boeynants. Besides his work directly with Boeynants, in 1973 Bonvoisin would fund the creation of the Front de la Jeunesse, a fascist organization formed out of the NEM-Clubs to which he appointed his advisor Francis Dossogne as the leader. A year later in 1974, Bonvoisin would play a key role in funding the Public Information Office, a branch of Belgian military intelligence that worked closely with private intelligence groups and was headed by Jean-Marie Bougerol, a name which will come up later. Through these connections, Bonvoisin linked mainstream right-wing politicians like Boeynants to outright fascist paramilitaries, as well as to the world of private intelligence.

Here’s where the ties between the mainstream right-wing power network of Boeynants and Bonvoisin becomes even more obviously tied into the Belgian fascist underground. One of the instructors hired by Bonvoisin to turn the Front de la Jeunesse into an effective fighting force was one Madani Bouhouche, a member of the Belgian Gendarmerie who worked as a part of the CIA-trained National Bureau of Drugs, an organization created under the direction of then-Prime Minister Paul Vanden Boeynants and General Leon Francois, and who apparently was a close associate of Michel Nihoul, frequenting many of the same clubs together. During the 1980s, Bouhouche would be a primary suspect in the “Brabant Killings,” an unsolved terrorist attack which we will discuss later. Furthermore, according to Gendarmerie officer Martial Lekeu, he and Bouhouche were members of a fascist organization inside of the Gendarmerie known as “Group G,” with intentions of destabilizing the Belgian state and securing power for the far right. Lekeu would identify one of the key leaders of Group G as none other than the aforementioned General Leon Francois. For his part, Francois had founded and served as the initial head of the National Bureau of Drugs with the support of the CIA, and in 1990, years before the Dutroux Affair, had been accused along with Boeynants of participating in drug-fueled orgies with underage girls. These five men, Boeynants, Bonvoisin, Bouhouche, Lekeu, and Francois, were not only all accused of involvement in the sexual abuse and trafficking of children, with Boeynants and Bouhouche being specifically identified as associates of Michel Nihoul, but also were all involved in a fascist conspiracy, an extension of the American-backed Operation Gladio.

For those who aren’t aware, Operation Gladio was the codename for the Italian branch of a series of “stay-behind” paramilitary networks set up after the end of World War II, which has been used as a shorthand for this series of networks as a whole throughout Western Europe, as well as countries such as Turkey. Overseen by NATO and the CIA, Gladio was set up in anticipation of an invasion by the Warsaw Pact, and in line with its anti-communist intentions heavily recruited from “former” fascists. In Italy, these American-backed neo-fascist secret armies would be responsible for the “Years of Lead” from the late 1960s to early 1980s, carrying out numerous terrorist attacks, including many which were intended as “false flags” to be blamed on leftist elements. The equivalent of Gladio in Belgium has been less well documented than its Italian counterpart, but still leaves behind a violent legacy and was certainly no less fascist than any of its parallel operations.

The Service de Documentation, de Renseignments et d'Action VIII, which translates to the “Documentation, Information and Action Service VIII,” or SDRA8 was the Belgian military branch of the Gladio “stay-behind” networks set up by American and British intelligence, along with the joint civilian branch of Belgian Gladio, the Sectie Training, Communicatie en Documentatie, or STC/Mob. It is a matter of record that the SDRA8 would be used to carry out false-flag attacks to discredit the Belgian Communist movement, as can be seen from a cursory examination of the 1984 Vielsalm Incident, in which American Special Forces and Belgian secret soldiers engaged in a raid on a police station in the small town of Vielsalm, stealing weapons from the cache and killing a warrant officer. Curiously, some of those stolen weapons would turn up in the apartment belonging to the nominally left-wing terrorist group, the Communist Combatant Cells - suggesting that like in Italy, elements of Gladio were posing as left-wing terror organizations in order to carry out attacks that would hurt the reputation of Belgian communists. False flag terrorist attacks certainly fit the Gladio playbook, and this would have coincided with a series of attacks being carried out around the same time period: the Brabant Massacres, a series of mysterious terrorist attacks carried out in the province of Brabant from between 1981 and 1985 in which 28 people were murdered at seemingly random locations, including restaurants and grocery stores, as if deliberately designed to provoke general panic.

Researchers looking into the Brabant killings found that the most likely culprit for the killings was a fascist paramilitary organization known as the Westland New Post, which had been formed in 1981 within the Front de la Jeunesse, itself the brainchild of Baron de Bonvoisin. The leader of the Front de la Jeunesse, Francis Dossogne, would confirm that the Westland New Post had not only been formed out of the Front, but also out of the circle of fascist infiltrators within the Belgian Gendarmerie known as “Group G,” which we mentioned earlier was run by the CIA-backed General Leon Francis. The commander of the Westland New Post would be Paul Latinus, a fasicst who had been recruited by the United States Defense Intelligence Agency back in the late 1960s and trained by NATO before being recruited by the Boeynants and Bonvoisin-backed Public Information Office headed by Jean-Marie Bougerol - a member of the SDRA8. Between the training of Latinus under US intelligence and NATO, his employment by a member of Belgian “stay-behind” network, and his membership in a secret fascist sect within the Gendarmerie lead by a general handpicked by the CIA, the Westland New Post makes itself known as an obvious extension of the terror networks created by Operation Gladio.

The claim that the Westland New Post was behind the Brabant Massacres was asserted by Martial Lekeu, a former member of both Group G and the Westland New Post who asserted that the original purpose of the killings was to create an atmosphere of fear in Belgium and to blame the attacks on the left. Westland New Post member Michel Libert would corroborate Lekeu’s claims of the WNP’s responsibility for the killings, describing how he would be sent to scope out grocery stores by Latinus prior to the attacks. It’s also worth noting that one of Libert’s main contacts, and a close associate of the WNP, was Madani Bouhouche, the close associate of Michel Nihoul. Towards the end of the Brabant massacres, WNP leader Paul Latinus would supposedly commit suicide in 1984 under mysterious circumstances, dead from strangulation with his telephone cord wrapped around his neck, with other members of the Westland New Post expressing skepticism that this had really been a suicide. Shortly after the end of the Brabant killings, in 1986, Madani Bouhouche would be arrested for the murder of Juan Mendez, a weapons engineer who believed that Bouhouche had stolen firearms from him for use in the Brabant killings. By 1988 however, Bouhouche would be released, even after having been caught trying to break out of jail with the help of the WNP.

So there you have it: an overview of the vast web that connects the Brabant killings to Operation Gladio and the Belgian fascist underground, and in turn to the Dutroux-Nihoul child trafficking ring that includes some of the most powerful figures in Belgian politics.This overview of Operation Gladio’s involvement in Belgian politics, as well as its key players and connections to child abuse and human trafficking rings, couldn’t possibly include every detail of this extensive network and its many appendages. Among the threads not touched on in this article have been Dutroux’s connection to the mysterious occult organization Institut Abrasax, the involvement of Pan-Europeanist “National Bolshevik” Jean-Francois Thiriart and the infamous Wackenhut Corporation in Belgian Gladio, and the Jonestown-esque case of the Order of the Solar Temple cult. The outline of the above should be considered as a blueprint for understanding matters of “deep politics” - it’s certainly easy to see the similarities between the activities of Jean-Michel Nihoul and, say, Jeffrey Epstein, including their connections to intelligence apparatuses. Furthermore, it should be taken as a warning that returns to “traditional values” are some sort of antidote to pervasive networks of abuse like this, where it becomes clear that “traditionalist” institutions like Opus Dei have empowered these architects of systemic abuse. Awareness of this hidden layer of politics can both clarify the operations of the state and the power elite even as significant amounts of information remain unavailable to us. Studying these sorts of networks of power can often impart a feeling of a total lack of political agency, without a doubt, but at the same time such study is a necessary first step. In order to take effective action, we must begin by endeavoring to understand what we are taking action against and how this leviathan operates - and the case of Belgium serves as a microcosm for such operations writ large.