Belgium: As the search for two step-sisters hits its 10th day, a horrified nation is gripped by an awful sense of deja vu, writes Jamie Smyth in Liege
The flags and bunting still hang over rue Saint Leonard but no one is celebrating.
The presence of TV crews is the first sign that something is not quite right in this run-down Belgian suburb of Liege. The way locals huddle together chatting in hushed tones on street corners, many clutching their children tightly, is a little unnerving.
Then you begin to notice the posters of two young girls, Nathalie Mahy and Stacie Lemmens, pasted to almost every shop window. The girls were last seen playing close to a bouncy castle erected for a street party next to Les Armuriers (the Gunsmiths), a bar in which their parents were drinking at about 1am 10 days ago. Despite frantic searches for the girls, police have no idea of their whereabouts and presume they have been abducted.
"I can't read the newspapers and I can't sleep," says Carin, a mother of three children who is pushing her one-year-old down the street in a buggy. "I've told my kids to be careful but they are so young. Schools have also told them to look out for strangers."
The fear among locals is palpable. No kids are in the playground opposite Place Vielle Montagne school. Few people want to talk to the press about the missing children, and everyone has a theory or has heard a rumour on the case, according to Mahmet, who works in the bakery opposite the pub where the girls were last seen.
"I just hope the girls can be found. Nothing like this has happened before," he says.
Unfortunately, this isn't true. For many people in Liege, the disappearance of step-sisters Nathalie (10) and Stacie (7) has transported them back to 1995, when the paedophile Marc Dutroux kidnapped two girls from the city. He imprisoned them in a dungeon in his home, sexually abused them and let them starve to death in a case that shocked the nation and exposed major deficiencies in the police investigation.
It took almost 10 years to bring Dutroux to trial, during which time he sexually abused a further four girls. The case prompted a change of government and a shake-up of the police.
In the current case, the police have been praised for their swift response. Suspicion immediately fell on Abdallah Ait Oud, a local man with a previous conviction for child-rape who lived just a few metres from the bar. Mr Ait Oud disappeared the night the girls went missing, only to present himself to police four days later when his photograph was broadcast on television during a world cup game.
He denies abducting the girls and has told police he fled the area because he thought he was being pursued for stealing cars. He also reportedly has an alibi, which is supported by a driver who says he picked him up on the night of the abductions, close to 1am.
But Liege police commissioner Jacques Leonard has labelled Mr Ait Oud a "psychopath with no sense of right or wrong" and, at a news conference in Liege yesterday, Belgian prosecutors successfully applied to the judicial authorities to keep him in custody for another 30 days. DNA tests on blood and sperm samples taken from his apartment are due to be concluded later this week.
Child Focus, the Belgian agency for missing children set up in the wake of the Dutroux case, says the police investigation has been very professional.
"Huge steps have been taken since the Dutroux era. Then we saw a slow reaction from the police and different investigation agencies competing rather than working together," says the agency's spokesman Dirk Depover. "Now we see swift action and co-ordination, good communication with the public and the parents."
But some tough child-protection proposals, such as setting up a DNA register of sex offenders and alerting mayors to the location of paedophiles released in their areas, have not been introduced in Belgium. These proposals and even tougher measures are now being debated on every corner and cafe of rue Saint Leonard.
"Above all, the government should never set these people free. They should have life sentences," says one mother who adds that local people believe 14 paedophiles are living closeby. "They shouldn't be in a neighbourhood with lots of children."
But the emotion unleashed by the abduction of Nathalie and Stacy is a cause for concern among criminologists that remember the Dutroux case.
"There was a collective madness," says Prof Christian Mormont, professor of clinical criminology at the University of Liege. "The whole population was mobilised . . . It was completely irrational and there were scandalous incidents of false claims of paedophile behaviour."
But in Les Armuriers, Nathalie and Stacy's mother, Catherine Dizier, can be seen talking to journalists and waiting. All she wants is some news of her two beautiful daughters, before it is too late.