By ROBERT WIELAARD and DON MELVIN
BRUSSELS (AP) — The ex-wife of a notorious pedophile who aided her husband’s horrific abuse and murder of young girls — and who let two children starve to death while her husband was in jail — was approved Tuesday for early release from prison, infuriating the victims’ parents and reopening a dark chapter in Belgian history.
Michelle Martin, who is now 52, received a 30-year prison term in 2004 for not freeing girls her then-husband Marc Dutroux held captive behind a secret door in their decrepit, dirty basement in Marcinelle, 40 miles south of Brussels.
Dutroux, 55, is serving a life term for kidnapping, torturing and abusing six girls in 1995 and 1996, and murdering four of them.
During those years, Dutroux also spent four months in jail for theft, leaving it to his wife to feed Julie Lejeune and Melissa Russo, a pair of friends imprisoned in the basement. Martin let the girls starve to death. They were 8 years old.
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What reason could the authorities have to give this woman a
30 year prison sentence, and then release her in only 8 years?
It was 16 years — she was arrested in 1996 — but you’re right, it was nowhere near the full sentence.