Handcuff Key 'found Near Dutroux Cell'

Police in Belgium were today investigating reports that a handcuff key had been found close to the cell housing alleged child killer and rapist Marc Dutroux.

The key was reported to have been found in a jar of salt in a kitchen near the cell, and its discovery raised fears that Dutroux, who is on trial accused of the rape and murder of several girls and young women, may have been attempting to escape.

It is unclear whether it would have unlocked the handcuffs Dutroux wears while being taken to and from the high-security courtroom.

He has been in jail since his arrest in 1996, but briefly escaped when he grabbed a police guard's gun in 1998. He was free for several hours before being recaptured.

Early in the trial, which began this month, there was an outcry when the door of the van taking him to court swung open. Police, however, maintained that there had been no chance of him escaping.

In the eight years between his arrest and trial, Dutroux became Belgium's most notorious prisoner.

In testimony earlier this month, he told the court how he had kidnapped and abused girls and young women and held them in a dungeon.

Dutroux has claimed that he carried out the abductions for a criminal sex ring that supplied children to people in high places. The investigating judge has dismissed the claims.

The trial is focusing on the fate of six victims who were abused in a cell behind a swing-away door that Dutroux built in the cellar of one of his seven small and decrepit homes.

Two eight-year-old victims, Julie Lejeune and Melissa Russo, starved to death in his basement in 1996 while he was serving four months in jail for a car theft and his wife neglected to feed them.

Two others, Eefje Lambrecks, aged 19, and 17-year-old An Marchal, were killed in 1996. Their bodies were unearthed from a Dutroux backyard, along with the body of Bernard Weinstein, a Dutroux associate. Two more girls were rescued from the cell in Dutroux's house after he was arrested.

The case shocked Belgium, and conspiracy theories about Dutroux receiving protection from influential people who belonged to the sex ring quickly spread.

More than 300,000 people took to the streets of Brussels in October 1996 in one of the largest demonstrations in the country's history, demanding justice as well as resignations over the case.

The trial is expected to run until mid to late May, and is set to hear evidence from 500 witnesses.