10 January 2005
AMSTERDAM —The trial of two Belgian brothers, and three other people accused of kidnapping, raping and forcing women to have sex with animals for pornographic videos has opened in the Dutch city of Lelystad.
Two Belgians and a Dutchman — were arrested in April last year on accusations they forced three kidnapped female asylum seekers to have sex with men and animals in a farm shed in the Dutch village of Kraggenburg.
The trial opened on Monday.
Both Belgian men claim they were pressured by the other to participate in the offences, while the Dutchman — who held the lease for the farm shed — denies any involvement. The girlfriends of the Belgian men are also standing
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The Belgian suspects have been identified as Marino and Philip M., their Dutch girlfriends as Rosie B. and Lorensia F. and the Dutchman has been identified as Eduard van E., of Rotterdam. They are charged with kidnapping, rape, human smuggling and membership of a criminal gang.
Three young North African asylum seekers were kidnapped in Belgium and forced to undergo various sex acts in the farm shed, until one of the women escaped in April to a nearby farmhouse and alerted police.
It was revealed in a pre-trial hearing in July that the three women possibly escaped a brutal death in which they would have been dismembered in front of a camera and murdered for a "snuff" film. The gang had allegedly already made contact with people who were willing to carry out the crime.
The case has been postponed since July last year because both witnesses and victims needed to give statements to police. The main suspects have also undergone a psychiatric assessment in the Dutch judiciary's observation clinic, the Pieter Baan Centrum in Utrecht.
The trial is scheduled to be heard over two days.
