Belgium's Blind Crime Fighters

LONDON, Nov. 16, 2007 — -- Sacha Van Loo isn't allowed to carry a gun, but he is one of Belgium's finest weapons against drug-related criminality.

Van Loo, 36, has been blind since birth, and because of the acute sense of hearing he developed to overcome his disability, he was chosen among dozens of applicants to be the ears of the Belgian federal police.

Police recruited six blind men, including Van Loo, after observing early experiments in neighboring Netherlands.

Their mission is to transcribe and analyze wiretap recordings and real-time telephone conversations. They investigate some of the country's most critical issues including drug trafficking and prostitution.

The transcriptions are used as evidence for criminal investigations and Van Loo's highly trained ears have proven to be a valuable asset.

"They can hear things that you and I cannot," Paul Van Thielen, director general of the Judicial Federal Police, told ABC News. "They are particularly effective analysing background noises. For instance, they can tell whether a conversation has taken place in an airport or a train station."

"I have been trained in echo location," Van Loo told ABC News. "I can hear the way a sound bounces off a wall or another object. I use this ability in everyday life. I just kept on doing it for my work."

Besides recognizing background noises and echoes, Van Loo is also an outstanding linguist.

Raised in a family in which he spoke several languages, Van Loo today speaks Flemish, Russian, Serbian, Ukrainian, Spanish, Portuguese, English, Hungarian, Romanian, Farsi, and is learning Arabic.

Van Loo can also precisely identify accents and dialects.

Despite his outstanding talents, Van Loo tries to keep a low profile. Call him a hero, and he shrugs it off.

"When I hear people saying I am the blind Sherlock Holmes," said Van Loo, "it makes me laugh."

"All we do is an administrative job," he said.

Van Loo even thinks that his unusual ability to recognize accents or background noises is not a gift, but just a matter of training.