Benassa Nabela

Belgian social activist and author, the older sister of murder victim Loubna Benaïssa who was kidnapped in Ixelles on 5 August 1992, aged nine. Loubnas body was found on 5 March 1997. She had been sexually assaulted and murdered. After their daughter went missing in 1992 the Benaïssa family launched a search and distributed posters with Loubnas photos. The police did little to help. Her case gained momentum when the Marc Dutroux crimes made the news in 1996. All older files concerning missing children were given renewed attention and the investigation into Loubnas disappearance was also reopened. On 16 September 1996, the Benaïssa family hired a lawyer and filed for civil action. Contact was made with the parents of victims of Dutroux (Russo, Lejeune, Marchal) and other parents of missing children. Like them, the Benaïssa family was received at the royal palace by King Albert II of Belgium. The investigation into the Dutroux case was in the hands of judge Jean-Michel Connerotte. When he was removed from the investigation on 14 October 1996 many people became angry. Nabela Benaïssa addressed a crowd on the steps of the Brussels Palais de Justice with a megaphone. Thus, Nabela Benaïssa became known nationally as the family spokeswoman. She joined the White March, a demonstration in Brussels on 20 October 1996 after serial killer and criminal Dutroux was arrested. On 5 March 1997, the remains of Loubna Benaïssa were found in the basement of 34-year-old gas station attendant Patrick Derochette. Thanks to the testimony of a neighbour who had heard a child screaming at the time of the kidnapping and an attentive girl next door who saw Loubna in the back of a car and noted the number plate on it, the perpetrator could be arrested. Derochette lived only a few hundred metres from the Benaïssa family. He had previously been incarcerated for sexual abuse of minors in 1984, but was released. He was declared insane and locked up in a psychiatric institution. After Loubnas funeral on 8 March 1997, another White March was organized in Hasselt for he on 15 March. Nabela Benaïssa wrote a book about the case in 1997. This work, Au nom de ma soeur ("In the name of my sister") was published with a foreword by historian Anne Morelli. That same year, Benaïssa was awarded the Régine Orfinger-Karlin Prize from the Belgian League for Human Rights. Link to Wikipedia biography (Dutch) Read less