After the most harrowing trial in Belgian history, a jury found notorious paedophile Marc Dutroux guilty on multiple charges of murder, rape and kidnapping girls as young as eight. But the question that has most anguished Belgians since Dutroux's arrest in 1996 -- whether he was part of a wider child-sex gang -- remained in the air after the jury returned a hung verdict on one of his three co-defendants. At the end of a three-and-a-half-month trial that has left Belgium reliving one of the darkest chapters in its history, Dutroux was found guilty of abducting and raping six girls, four of whom died. Their bodies were unearthed from the gardens of Dutroux properties in the summer of 1996. The former electrician had already been convicted in 1989 of abducting and raping girls, but served only three years in jail. Revelations of police and judicial bungling made during the trial revived feelings of public anger which, in October 1996, culminated in a mass march of more than 300,000 people through the streets of Brussels. Dutroux, 47, faces life in jail once sentencing is delivered in the days to come. His ex-wife Michelle Martin, 44, was found guilty of imprisoning the abducted girls in complicity with her then-husband. Michel Lelievre, 33, a former heroin addict described by prosecutors as Dutroux's "faithful companion", was convicted of kidnapping. But the jury failed to muster the required majority needed to convict Michel Nihoul, 63, of complicity in the abductions. The three-judge bench ordered the 12 jurors to reconsider the convicted conman's case, which goes to the heart of suspicions among Belgians that a shadowy paedophile gang lay behind the brutal crimes. The parents of Dutroux's victims expressed overwhelming relief after what the press has dubbed "Belgium's most hated man" was found guilty. "I'm relieved. It's very important that it has been said, that the jury has said, 'it's Dutroux that murdered your daughter'," commented Pol Marchal, whose 17-year-old daughter An suffered a terrifying end at Dutroux's hands. The former electrician was found guilty of murdering An and 19-year-old Eefje Lambrecks after abducting them with the help of Lelievre while the teenagers were on holiday on the Belgian coast in August 1995. Louisa Lejeune, whose daughter Julie was one of two eight-year-old girls who died after being abducted by Dutroux, said "a page has turned". "It's recognition (of what happened) and that comes as a relief," she told reporters. The reading of the verdicts was received in absolute silence. Sabine Dardenne, one of two girls who escaped Dutroux's clutches, beamed as the jury foreman found Dutroux guilty of abducting, imprisoning and raping her during a terrifying ordeal in mid-1996. Dardenne was then aged 12. She was rescued from a dank cellar purpose-built by Dutroux to confine his victims in August 1996, along with Laetitia Delhez, then 14. Like the four girls who died, Dardenne and Delhez were repeatedly raped. But when Dutroux led police to the cellar, the girls hid from their rescuers and then embraced their torturer, convinced by him that he was their protector from a gang that was supposedly out to kill them. The fate of Julie Lejeune and her eight-year-old friend Melissa Russo was perhaps the most harrowing of all. The girls, whose oft-reprinted photographs show a picture of smiling innocence, were left to starve to death in the dungeon when Dutroux served a jail stint for car theft. But the prosecution was unable to determine precisely when they died and so could not press murder charges against Dutroux, who claimed that his ex-wife failed to feed them. **PHOTO CAPTION*** Marc Dutroux attends the verdict in the courtroom of the justice palace in Arlon, Belgium, Thursday June 17, 2004. (AP)