Belgium was plunged into political crisis last night by the escape of the alleged child murderer, Marc Dutroux. The survival of the government may have been assured by his recapture 3 1/2 hours later, but the scandal has cost the jobs of both Ministers of Justice and Interior.
Last night King Albert returned urgently from a visit to France, and speculation was rife that the head of the once-again disgraced Gendarmerie would soon follow those of the two ministers.
The Belgian Prime Minister, Mr Jean-Luc Dehaene, told parliament he had reluctantly accepted the resignations to allow the government to pursue the crucial work of reforming the justice system "to the end".
There is no doubt, however, that the real fear of the political class is that a general election in the current climate would prove a bonanza to the far-right in Flanders and the green-left in Wallonia.
People in the street expressed their horror and "shame at being Belgian".
Politicians spoke of their bewilderment at the chain of events in the very words that will all be too familiar in Ireland: "grotesque", "unbelievable", "bizarre".
But the father of one of the murdered children, Mr Gino Russo, decried any suggestion that such events were "unprecedented".
"On reflection, what happened is clearly in line with the logic of the events of the last two years," a calm but deeply bitter Mr Russo said. "I don't know whether to laugh or cry." For two years, he said, he had sought the resignation of the two ministers. What happened yesterday was the final straw.
Dutroux escaped from the Palace of Justice in the southern town of Neufchateau by overpowering one of his two police guards and then threatening the other with his colleague's gun. Hijacking a car in the square outside, Dutroux drove 10 km south to local woods, where he was recaptured by a huge dragnet operation.
Within minutes of the escape the entire country was on maximum alert, borders and airports sealed. Four neighbouring countries, Luxembourg, France, Germany and the Netherlands, assisted. Brussels prepared to bring out the army to help with the search and gave immediate armed protection to the families of the children who died.
Dutroux, who was arrested in August 1996 and whose trial is unlikely to start for at least a year, faces charges in connection with the murder of four girls and the abduction of two others. He had been brought to Neufchateau from the prison in Arlon some 40 km away to exercise his right to consult the prosecution file against him. It was a journey he had made every day for the previous three weeks. Questions are being asked about the size of his escort, why the file could not have been brought to him in prison, and why the second guard had felt threatened by a gun that (under police regulations governing the transportation of prisoners) was not loaded.
His lawyer, Mr Julien Pierre, insisted on TV that the escape had all the hallmarks of a spontaneous act. Few were convinced.
Mr Russo's lawyer, Mr Victor Hissel, insisted that the events of the day had their roots in systemic failure and the attempts by the authorities over the last two years to "trivialise" the scale of the problems facing the justice system.
He bitterly attacked Mr Dehaene for the signal sent to every level of the Belgian bureaucracy in his recent renomination of the former minister, Mr Melchior Wathelet, to the European Court of Justice.
Mr Wathelet, while a minister in the late 1980s, had released Dutroux after only months of a 13-year sentence for rape and abduction.
The failure of the system, Mr Hissel said, was a failure to make anyone take responsibility for the litany of errors that has characterised the child murder portfolios.
