Murder of Philippine: the suspect left Switzerland

Nearly a month and a half after his arrest in Geneva, Taha O., the suspect in the murder of Philippine in Paris, was handed over to the French authorities on Wednesday and must be presented to an investigating judge.

Taha O., a 22-year-old Moroccan, was handed over to the authorities in Annemasse (Haute-Savoie), on the border with Switzerland, AFP learned from a source close to the case, confirming information from BFMTV.

He was arrested on September 24 in the City of Calvin where he had fled after the murder of Philippine, a 19-year-old student, whose body was discovered buried in Paris in the Bois de Boulogne. A judicial investigation was opened in Paris for rape and homicide.

He was heard again on Monday by the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the canton of Geneva and had confirmed his consent to being handed over to France according to a simplified extradition procedure, the Paris Prosecutor’s Office indicated. France filed an extradition request on October 9 but the suspect initially refused to be extradited.

His lawyer in Switzerland, Me Florence Yersin, announced last Tuesday that he had finally accepted this extradition “after understanding the ins and outs of the procedure”, believing that it was an “informed choice of his leaves”.

Philippine’s murder caused immense emotion in France and also a virulent public debate. The suspect was already convicted in 2021 for rape, then released in June 2024, “at the end of his sentence”, according to the Paris Prosecutor’s Office. He was then placed in an administrative detention center in Metz.

Upon his release, he was placed under house arrest in a hotel in Yonne where he never went. Having failed to comply with his reporting obligation, he was included in the wanted persons file the day before the murder, September 19.

He was under an obligation to leave the territory, which provoked strong reactions, in particular from the far right. After this murder and the arrest of the suspect in the Grottes district, the Minister of the Interior, Bruno Retailleau, also urged “to develop the legal arsenal”.

On September 26, President Macron expressed “the emotion of the entire Nation” after a “heinous crime” and considered that it was necessary “to better protect the French every day”.

In a letter addressed to AFP, a previous victim of the suspect spoke to nuance the debates. The “dysfunction” of the OQTF must not “obliterate the essential question of recidivism”, she underlined in her letter, authenticated by AFP. “Why did the prison system fail to prevent this recidivism? Why were we unable to stop this escalation of violence leading to the murder of a young woman?”, asked the writer of the letter.

“Even if this OQTF had been respected, what international cooperation mechanisms exist to prevent the recurrence of sexist and sexual crimes by deported criminals? Our fraternity, our humanism, cannot stop at the gates of our borders,” she wrote.