A 38-year-old man from Loksbergen in Limburg is accused of the murder of a young couple, Shana Appeltans and Kevin Paulus, in January in his home town, and of a teenager in April 2007 near Diest. He has been identified by the newspapers, which have published photos, family and professional facts and lurid details of the murders (gained from anonymous sources “close to the enquiry”).

For a reader from another legal system, the surprising element might be that so much is allowed to be reported. Belgian rules on press coverage are not laws, explains Yves Desmet, political commentator for De Morgen. The rules are laid down by the Council for Journalism, which consists of representatives of newspaper publishers, journalists and independent members. The council recognises the conflict between the right of the suspect to privacy and to the presumption of innocence on the one hand, and the public’s right to information on the other.

When the Loksbergen double murder case first broke, some newspapers went farther than others, leading Desmet to attack, among others, Het Laatste Nieuws for publishing identifying details on the suspect. The main reporter for Het Laatste Nieuws replied to defend himself, pointing out that De Morgen had itself published enough details to identify the man and that his newspaper had stressed the man’s presumption of innocence.

Only days later, hostilities were suspended, as the Leuven prosecutor’s admission that the suspect had confessed to the murders (and to the murder of Annick Van Uytsel) opened the floodgates: now the newspapers could publish anything they could find.

The guidelines from the Council for Journalism, however, advise a minimum of reporting of identifying details, except in cases where there is an over-riding public interest, such as when a suspect is at large. A suspect can be identified where guilt is not at issue, such as when caught in the act or where a confession has been made.

However, as Paul Van Thielen, director of the federal judicial police, pointed out, “a confession is not necessarily the truth”. He referred to a case in Schiedam in the Netherlands in 2000 where a man confessed to the murder of a 10- year-old girl, leading to his conviction and an 18- year sentence. Four years later, he was released after DNA evidence proved beyond doubt that someone else had committed the crime.

In the Netherlands, the anonymity given to suspects even extends beyond the verdict. There, as Yves Desmet describes it, the system is “more strict but sometimes silly, so that the man who shot Pim Fortuyn is still known only as Volkert van der G”.

In the United Kingdom, pre-trial reporting is restricted to the suspect’s name and plea. The rules are not always adhered to, so that the 1991 murder conviction of sisters Michelle and Lisa Taylor was overturned in part because of press coverage which, the Court of Appeal said, created “a real risk of prejudice” to a fair trial.

In the United States, one of the most famous cases of prejudicial pre-trial press was the conviction of Dr Sam Sheppard for the murder of his wife in 1954. Sheppard, on whose case the TV series and movie The Fugitive were said to be based, served a decade in jail before F Lee Bailey, who later successfully defended OJ Simpson, convinced the Supreme Court he had not received a fair trial thanks to the “carnival atmosphere” surrounding the case. Sheppard was retried and acquitted.

“There are fundamentalists within the judicial world who want to protect their own interests,” Desmet says. If their proposed restrictions were introduced, he says, “we would never have heard about the Brabant Killers case,” which is still being investigated.

One of the “fundamentalists” is Ghent-based lawyer Walter Van Steenbrugge, who has recently repeated his objections to pretrial coverage, as in his book De affaire justitie. “For the press, the presumption of innocence is of little importance,” he said. “The Flemish press is suffering from a hunger for sensation, and the more blood on the ceiling, the more copy there is in the paper.” His recipe for a return to objectivity is stark: “As long as a case has not been fully disposed of by the courts, an investigating magistrate, a prosecutor and all other parties may not talk to the press. That’s the only way to maintain the presumption of innocence.”

Amid the flood of news and speculation pouring out of the newspapers on the known and possible crimes of Ronald Janssen, the parents of one of his victims made an eloquent plea to be left alone by the media.

Eddy and Martine Van Uytsel are the parents of Annick, who was 18 when she disappeared in April 2007 while cycling home from a party in Schaffen, near Diest. Her last GSM signal was traced to Halen, where Ronald Janssen lives. Her body was found six days later in the Albert Canal. It had been carefully packed in plastic and weighed down, and all DNA and other trace evidence wiped out.

Following his confession to the murders of Shana and Kevin, Janssen admitted also to the killing of Annick, the prosecutors of Hasselt and Leuven have confirmed.

The Van Uytsel family have been represented from the start by star criminal lawyer Jef Vermassen, who is a familiar figure to media across Flanders, and who was in fact the first to propose Janssen as a possible solution to Annick’s murder. Since then, he has also suggested Janssen might have other crimes on his conscience. However, while he remains one of the most prominent figures in the whole coverage of the affair, his clients were asking to be excused from the spotlight.

“Our thoughts go out to the parents of Shana and Kevin,” said Annick’s mother Martine, while Eddy Van Uytsel looked on grim-faced. “Every parent who has ever lost a child will agree: this is the worst thing that can happen. We feel more of a bond now with the parents of Shana and Kevin, especially now that we know that our children have suffered the same trauma, at the hands of the same man. The fact that the killer is now arrested is a sort of consolation. No child will ever again be taken away by this man. But the places set for Shana and Kevin and Annick will always remain empty.

“We have long had to live with questions, and now we will have to go on living with the answers, and those we still have to discover. One question has now been answered: Who? But immediately new questions arise: What? Where? And most of all, Why?”

And they went on to ask the media to leave them alone. “For that, we need to be left in peace, for us and for our lawyer, free from any speculation, to try, as far as possible, to get on with our lives.”