Marc Dutroux, the alleged Belgian child killer, apparently fell asleep today on the first day of his long-awaited trial.

Though all of Belgium is riveted by the start of a trail which followed crimes that stunned the nation, Dutroux appeared to drift off during jury selection.

"Mr Magnee, I think your client is dozing off," Judge Stephane Goux told Xavier Magnee, Dutroux's principal lawyer. Mr Dutroux appeared to slump in his seat as the protacted procedure of jury selection carried on for most of the morning.

Dutroux, along with three alleged accomplices that include his former wife, arrived at the courthouse in the southeast town of Arlon this morning in an armoured van, to face charges of kidnapping and raping six schoolgirls and killing four of them.

The 47-year-old former electrician, who kept the girls locked up in makeshift cells in the basement of his house, has admitted abduction and sequestration, but denied killing the children. He faces a maximum sentence of life in prison.

The first day of the trial has been restricted to selecting the jury, with Dutroux, who has previous unrelated convictions for child rape, expected to take the stand on Wednesday.

One of the survivors, Sabinne Dardenne, aged 12 at the time of her abduction, is expected to give evidence, while the other, Laetitia Delhez, then aged 14, has yet to decide whether she will give evidence.

The trial of Dutroux, who has been in custody since his arrest in August 1996, promises to be a long and emotional affair, expected to last at least two months with more than 450 witnesses due to give evidence.

Many Belgians doubt whether the trial will answer all of their questions however, given the widely held suspicion that Dutroux lay at the heart of a sinister paedophile ring that counted politicians, judges and policemen amongst their number.

Dutroux himself has fuelled these conspiracy theories by claiming that he was "used" by others. He told VTM, the Flemish-language television station: "People want to believe that I am at the centre of everything. They are mistaken.

"I did things of which I was not the driving force. I was used as an instrument by others, who were themselves used as instruments by others."

Dutroux will testify this week via microphone from behind bullet-proof glass in the court chamber. During previous court appearances he has worn a flak jacket.

More than 300 police were deployed for the trial around the Palace of Justice in Arlon, a quiet town near the French and Luxembourg borders, while hundreds of Belgian and foreign journalists have descended on the town.

The media presence has far outnumbered the locals and other onlookers who have braved the snow and freezing temperatures outside the glass-fronted town centre courthouse.

In the coming weeks prosecution lawyers will rake up the traumatic events that began with Dutroux's arrest on August 13, 1996, by police investigating the disappearance of two young girls.

The girls, Mme Dardenne and Mme Delhez, were rescued two days later from captivity in the cellar of a property belonging to Dutroux in Charleroi, south of Brussels. The prosecutors maintain that they had been repeatedly raped, beaten and starved by Dutroux.

Yet worse was to come. Subsequent investigations unearthed the bodies of four other girls, including two eight-year-olds, in the gardens of other properties belonging to Dutroux. The four girls had been missing for a year.

Dutroux is charged with murder, rape, abduction and confinement in relation to the girls' ordeal, as well as for the murder of an alleged accomplice.

Mme Dardenne has largely managed to rebuild her life, with a steady boyfriend and a clerical job. The house in which she was held prisoner is boarded up.

Dutroux former second wife Michelle Martin, 44; Michel Lelievre, 32, his alleged "right-hand man"; and a fourth suspect, Michel Nihoul, all face charges of kidnapping and complicity in the crimes.

M Nihoul, 62, is said to have organised drug-fuelled sex parties for the Brussels social elite. It is his involvement in particular that has kept alive suspicions that Dutroux was part of a much larger paedophile ring.

In 1996, public fury at police and government incompetence culminated in a series of "white marches" in Belgium that at their height drew more than 300,000 people into the heart of Brussels.