Belgian police are questioning a suspect over two missing schoolgirls - a case which has reawakened memories of the Marc Dutroux paedophile killings.
The girls, aged seven and 10, went missing on Friday night during a street party in the city of Liege.
The suspect, Abdellah Ait Oud, 39, turned himself in to police after the authorities had publicised his details.
Reports say he was seen near the stepsisters Stacy Lemmens and Nathalie Mahy around the time they disappeared.
He is the boyfriend of a waitress who works in a bar near the spot where the girls were last seen, the French news agency AFP reports.
Criminal record
Police searched his home on Tuesday and on Wednesday the girls' parents will also be questioned by police.
In 1995 Abdellah Ait Oud was sentenced to five years in jail, including one suspended, for the rape of his 14-year-old niece, Belgian media report.
In April 2001 he was rearrested for the rape and kidnap while on parole of another 14-year-old girl, the Belgian RTBF news website reports. He was declared mentally unstable and detained, but last December he was released, as the authorities were satisfied that he had been "cured".
Belgium was deeply shocked by the Marc Dutroux paedophile case, in which two girls from Liege disappeared in June 1995. Their bodies were not found until a year later - in Dutroux's garden.
In 2004 Dutroux was found guilty of leading a gang that kidnapped and raped six girls in the mid-1990s, leading to the deaths of four of them.
(BBC)
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