A French man accused of killing seven young women has gone on trial in the northern town of Charleville-Mezieres, in what is one of France's biggest ever serial killing trials.

 

Michel Fourniret went on trial on Thursday, charged with kidnapping, rape and murder in the crimes committed in France and Belgium between 1987 and 2003.

Monique Olivier, his wife, is being tried at the same time, accused of complicity in five of the killings. Both face life in prison if convicted.

 

The victims, aged from 12 to 21, were strangled, shot or stabbed with a screwdriver.

Fourniret appeared in a glass-enclosed defendants' box alongside his wife and refused to speak at the opening of his trial unless the judge emptied the courtroom.

 

 

Fourniret was detained by Belgian police in June 2003 after his attempted kidnapping of a 13-year-old girl went wrong.

 

The girl gave authorities his licence plate number after she managed to unbind her hands and escape from the back of his van.

 

Belgium extradited Olivier to France in 2005 and Fourniret in 2006.

The trial, one of France biggest murder trials, has drawn comparisons with that of the 2004 trial of Belgian Marc Dutroux, who was convicted of killing six girls between 1995-6.