Killer of 20 tourists returns to France
2022.12.24 12:48
Killer of 20 tourists returns to France
Budrigannews.com – Charles Sobhraj, a sentenced executioner who police trust killed in excess of 20 western hikers on the “flower child trail” through Asia during the 1970s and 1980s, got back to France on Saturday after almost twenty years in the slammer in Nepal.
Due to his advanced age and poor health, Nepal’s Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered Sobhraj, also known as “The Serpent” and the “bikini killer” in Thailand, released.
Sobhraj, 78, a French national who arrived at Paris’ main international airport shortly after 7 a.m. and was escorted off the plane by police for identity checks. He was born to an Indian father and a Vietnamese mother.
Isabelle Coutant-Peyre, Sobhraj’s attorney, stated to Reuters, “He is well, he is a free man.” When asked about his next move, she said, He will document a lawful objection against Nepal on the grounds that the entire body of evidence against him was manufactured.”
Since being arrested in 2003 on suspicion of murdering American backpacker Connie Jo Bronzich in 1975, Sobhraj had been imprisoned in a Nepalese high-security prison. He had served 19 years out of a 20-year sentence for the murder of Laurent Carriere, Bronzich’s Canadian friend.
However, he was also suspected of killing more people, including six women in Thailand in the 1970s, where some of their bodies were discovered on a beach near the Pattaya resort.
Before he could be tried for the charges against him in Thailand, he was imprisoned in India for poisoning a group of French tourists in the capital, New Delhi, in 1976.
On the flight out of Nepal, Sobhraj informed the French news agency AFP that he was not responsible for the murders of Bronzich and Carriere.
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“I need to do a lot. “I have to sue a lot of people,” Sobhraj was quoted as saying by AFP.
Sobhraj has previously been described as a con artist, seducer, robber, and murderer by associates.
The BBC and Netflix (NASDAQ:) in 2021 produced a drama series about the alleged murders of Sobhraj.
When Reuters inquired whether Sobhraj might be subject to criminal charges in France, neither the interior nor the justice ministries of France provided a response. In France, the most serious crimes have a 20-year statute of limitations.
