I am very grateful to anyone possessing the information!

There’s more than one way to guard the rights of the accused, and the English/American system is not automatically the best way.

The Belgium supreme court had upheld the conviction on corruption charges of Willy Claes, previously secretary-general of NATO and before that the socialist deputy prime minister of Belgium so I started to dig a little with google and in electronic encyclopaedia. It was another party funding scandal, perhaps rather along the lines of what became Kohlgate in Germany. One thing that emerged was that a socialist Belgian MP who had blown a whistle on it was found dead, murdered. Claes was not implicated but as far as I can tell no one has been arrested for the murder.

All that started a regular interest in the scale of political corruption in western Europe. More digging led to more discoveries. Unlike American media which plays up political scandals, in Europe the scandals tend to get buried away as minor news items and get quickly forgotten. Those who become aware of the large and growing scale of political corruption in Europe tend to become increasingly wary of ever closer political integration. The Eurostat scandal in the EU Commission is yet another new chapter in this long running saga.

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”
Edmund Burke - at: http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Edmund_Burke/

I think you’re the first person I’ve encountered to see a violation of Dutroux’ human rights in this situation, as opposed to seeing it as a sign of the incompetence of the Belgian police and prosecutors.

The exceedingly tardy progression in bringing Dutroux to trial is but one of many reasons Brits have become increasingly cautious about ever closer political integration in Europe when our starting point is this from Magna Carta of 1215:

“39. No freemen shall be taken or imprisoned or disseised or exiled or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him nor send upon him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.” - quoted from text at: http://www.cs.indiana.edu/statecraft/magna-carta.html

Any readers who feel in need of some updating on what’s behind the protracted course of bringing Dutroux to justice might try this suitably sanitised account on the BBC website: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/correspondent/1944428.stm

I still remember going to the police to ask if I needed to register somewhere, and they looked at me like I was some kind of nutter, and politely told me not to bother. Compared to Belgium, the UK looks to me to have a much saner approach

Anyway, we’ll go through the motions, but as we’ve discussed elsewhere, we’re starting to think it might just be simpler to move to the UK, which does seem quite a bit more entrepreneur-friendly. And, thanks to the convoluted history of the Emerald Isle, the fact that his mum was born in Belfast might entitle him to British citizenship in addition to the Irish citizenship he’s already claimed.

Besides, even if he gets his status straightened out, there’s still the matter of getting *me* legalized, which is, as they say, “pas ?vident.” But as you say, I am still far better off than a Belgian who has “overstayed” his permission to remain in the U.S. following a layoff… the worst they can do is kick me out, and as far as I know, Belgium is not currently sending visa violators to gulags located on tropical islands and holding them incommunicado.

(Note to any Belgian immigration officials who might be reading this: I’m a *tourist*. Honest.)

Bob - I actually have gone out of my way not to know or care about the Dutroux trial. Last I heard, it was planned for 2004, maybe.