---
category: Belgium Scandals
created: 2026-04-28
location: Belgium
relations:
- end: 1996-08-12
  fn: 3
  role: accomplice
  start: 1995
  type: partner_of
  with: '[[Marc Dutroux]]'
summary: Accomplice of Marc Dutroux, arrested with him on August 12, 1996, convicted
  at Arlon in 2004 of three abductions, sentenced to 25 years and released on conditions
  in December 2019.
tags:
- Person
- Belgium
- Dutroux
updated: 2026-09-22
---

Michel Lelièvre was arrested with [Marc Dutroux](/people/marc-dutroux/) and [Michelle Martin](/people/michelle-martin/) at about five in the afternoon on August 12, 1996, three days after the abduction of [Laetitia Delhez](/people/laetitia-delhez/) at Bertrix, when a witness had remembered three digits of a license plate.[^2] At the trial in Arlon he admitted abducting [An Marchal](/people/an-marchal/) and [Eefje Lambrecks](/people/eefje-lambrecks/) in August 1995 but denied raping or killing them.[^4] Dutroux told the court that Lelièvre and [Bernard Weinstein](/people/bernard-weinstein/) had come to take the two young women from his house after fifteen days, and he attributed the abduction of [Julie Lejeune](/people/julie-lejeune/) and [Melissa Russo](/people/melissa-russo/) to Lelièvre and one Pierre Rochow, a defense the jury rejected.[^3][^5]

On June 17, 2004, the jury convicted Lelièvre of taking part in a criminal association engaged in abducting children and in one engaged in selling drugs and trafficking human beings, and of the abduction of An, [Sabine Dardenne](/people/sabine-dardenne/) and Laetitia, which he did not deny. It also convicted him of the sequestration of the young victims, rejecting his lawyer Slusny's argument that he had never met some of them at Dutroux's house in Marcinelle, and found for An and Eefje the aggravating circumstance of torture causing death.[^5] He was sentenced to 25 years. The Brussels sentence-enforcement court granted him conditional release at the end of September 2019 over the unfavorable opinion of the Brussels prosecutor's office, with about a dozen conditions including training or work and compensation of the civil parties, and he left prison on December 2, 2019.[^6]

### Statements Attributed to Him

The writer S. Dovey wrote that he was born in 1967, met Dutroux in 1995 through a mutual acquaintance, was an unemployed man with a minor record, and was paid in drugs; that he blocked Sabine's path near her school while Dutroux seized her and waited in the vehicle during Laetitia's abduction; and that he told investigators of Dutroux's drugging and hypnosis of victims, of seeing An and Eefje naked and made to clean tiles, of a man in a Mercedes who came to the house demanding money after seeing them, of girls ordered by [Jean-Michel Nihoul](/people/jean-michel-nihoul/) from Slovakia and the Czech Republic, and of Dutroux's boast of raping and abandoning a girl near Trenčín.[^1]

[^1]: Dovey, S. *Eye of the Chickenhawk.* Thehotstar, 2023. Its statements that his involvement began only after Dutroux's release in March 1996 and that he was paroled in 2005 are contradicted by his conviction for the August 1995 abduction of An Marchal and by his release in December 2019; its dates for the Dardenne abduction and Dutroux's arrest are contradicted by the commission's chronology. Sole source for the passages so cited.
[^2]: Chambre des Représentants de Belgique. *Enquête parlementaire sur la manière dont l'enquête, dans ses volets policiers et judiciaires, a été menée dans l'affaire Dutroux-Nihoul et consorts,* rapport, Doc. 713/6-96/97, April 18, 1997, chronology of August 1996; translated from the French. https://www.dekamer.be/FLWB/PDF/49/0713/49K0713006.pdf
[^3]: Fleury, Elisabeth. "Le calvaire d'An et Eefje." *Le Parisien,* April 5, 2004. https://www.leparisien.fr/faits-divers/le-calvaire-d-an-et-eefje-05-04-2004-2004887724.php
[^4]: "Notorious child rapist-murderer convicted." NBC News and Associated Press, June 17, 2004. https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna5233011
[^5]: "Nihoul acquitté pour les enlèvements." *La Dernière Heure,* June 17, 2004; translated from the French. https://www.dhnet.be/actu/faits/2004/06/17/nihoul-acquitte-pour-les-enlevements-MF73NPYQVBC25I2Y6P54BXIQDA/
[^6]: "Belgique. 'L'homme à tout faire' de Marc Dutroux, Michel Lelièvre, est sorti de prison." *Ouest-France,* December 2, 2019; translated from the French. https://www.ouest-france.fr/europe/belgique/belgique-l-homme-tout-faire-de-marc-dutroux-michel-lelievre-est-sorti-de-prison-6634935