Veronique Courjault trial begins

The long-awaited murder trial of a Frenchwoman accused of killing three of her own babies and hiding two of them in the freezer - 'l'affaire des bebes congeles' as it is known in France - finally gets underway today in the French city of Tours. If jurors find 41-year-old Veronique Courjault guilty, she is likely to spend the rest of her life in jail.

The grisly tale has been in and out of the French media for three years. One of the most extraordinary factors is that Veronique's husband, Jean-Louis Courjault, who was initially suspected of complicity, has been cleared of any involvement. He was frequently away from home on business and Veronique managed to hide each pregnancy from him.

The macabre affair came to light in July 2006 when the couple were living in Seoul, where Jean-Louis worked for a South Korean car company. Veronique was away in France with the couple's two children on their annual summer holiday when Jean-Louis, looking for frozen mackerel in the freezer, discovered two tiny corpses wrapped in plastic.

As Philip Jacobson wrote in a cover story about Courjault for The First Post two years ago, the Seoul police, apparently anxious not to offend a foreign businessman, allowed him to join his family on their vacation. They never returned to Seoul.

Back in France, the couple disclaimed any knowledge of the two infants. But the French authorities used DNA to establish that the Courjaults were the birth parents of the two babies. Under interrogation, Veronique confessed to killing the babies shortly after giving birth to them alone: she subsequently admitted to murdering a third infant she had borne in France several years earlier.

In October 2006, the investigating magistrate ordered Veronique to be held in custody until her trial. Psychologists who examined her claimed she suffered from a condition that leads some women to reject the reality of their pregnancy. ·