Autopsies Show Belgian Girls Were Strangled

The two Belgian schoolgirls who were found dead on Wednesday were strangled before their bodies were dumped beside a busy railway line, preliminary autopsy results revealed yesterday.

Nathalie Mahy, 10, and her stepsister Stacy Lemmens, seven, will be buried separately at Nathalie's father's insistence.

Nathalie will be buried on Saturday in a private ceremony and the funeral of Stacy, seven, will be conducted at the Sainte-Foy church near the Armuriers bar in the rundown Saint-Leonard area of Liège where the two girls disappeared in the early hours of June 10. Stacy will be buried in the Paifve cemetery next to her grandmother.

The girls' bodies, which were found in a storm drain next to one of the railway lines into Liège, were due to be released to their families yesterday. They are then expected to be taken in identical coffins to the De Lahaye funeral parlour where their bodies will lie in separate rooms.

The preliminary autopsy results also revealed that Nathalie had been raped. A court in Liège ruled that the chief suspect would remain in custody. Abdallah Ait Oud, 38, a convicted child rapist, was charged with kidnapping after turning himself in four days after the girls disappeared.

The authorities are expected to spend the next few days conducting tests to establish whether Mr Ait Oud 's DNA was found on one or both of the girls' bodies. Mr Ait Oud, who denies any involvement in the deaths, was in the Armuriers bar on the night they disappeared. He was last seen before they vanished; he reappeared four days later when his picture was on television. Pathologists concluded that the bodies were immersed for several days in water in the storm drain.

School teachers yesterday began the lengthy process of counselling the girls' school friends. Psychologists were on hand for Stacy's 20 classmates at the Athénée de Visé school and for Nathalie's contemporaries at the Botanic Gardens school.

Catherine Maes, Stacy's head teacher, told RTL: "We are going to work together to let the children mourn. We let them cry, express their anger, draw - all under supervision."

The EU said the murders showed the need for a European charter on children's rights that will be unveiled next week. Franco Frattini, the justice commissioner, said: "I think the whole of Europe has to voice its outrage and horror at the murder of the two children here in Belgium, and we can only hope the police and judicial inquiries under way will quickly bring the guilty person or persons to justice."