A SECOND suspected child killer is facing trial in Belgium after admitting murdering six young girls on both sides of the Franco-Belgian border.

A week after Marc Dutroux was sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering six girls in Belgium in 1995 and 1996, a French forestry worker confessed yesterday to having killed a similar number of children.

Anne Thily, state prosecutor in Liège, said that Michel Fourniret, 62, had told investigators that he committed the crimes in northeastern France and Belgium between 1987 and 2001.

Among his victims was a 12-year-old Belgian girl, Elisabeth Brichet, who was killed after being snatched in Namur in 1989. “Michel Fourniret has admitted kidnapping her and . . . that he was forced to kill her,” Cédric Visart de Bocarmé, the crown prosecutor who is in charge of the Brichet case, said.

Francis Brichet, Elisabeth’s father, said that he had been told by police that M Fourniret had confessed to having “raped, killed and buried” her.

He said that it was a “relief” to know what had happened to her: “But I’m not celebrating. We have to wait to see whether this M Fourniret will go back on what he has said.”

The forestry worker is suspected of having murdered two French teenagers, Céline Saison, 18, from Charleville-Meziérès, and Manyana Thumpong, 13, from Sedan.

Both were violently assaulted and their bodies were found in woodland. However, the Belgian authorities refused to say if he had admitted to the killings.

M Fourniret’s confession came after his wife, Monique Olivier, accused him of nine child murders, some of which she said she had seen, and others of which she was told about by her husband.

Mme Olivier, a former prison visitor, was arrested last week and charged with failing to help a person in danger. She was remanded in custody in the southern Belgian town of Namur, prosecution officials said.

According to Belgian television reports, she told the police what she knew after Dutroux’s wife, Michelle Martin, was sentenced to 30 years in prison for her role in the serial murders. Mme Olivier was afraid of a similar sentence if she denied knowledge of her husband’s alleged crimes, police sources said.

M Fourniret was arrested in Belgium last year after kidnapping a 13-year-old girl who escaped and alerted the police.

Hairs were found in his van, but Belgian investigators have not yet received the result of DNA tests to check whether they are from his suspected victims.

Since M Fourniret’s arrest, police in Belgium and France have been trying to piece together his movements over the past few years with the help of mobile phone records, credit card receipts and motorway toll tickets, in an attempt to link him with several missing girls.

M Fourniret was sentenced to seven years in prison at Evry Criminal Court outside Paris in 1987 after being convicted of rape, violent assault and indecency in France.

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