Europe 1 with AFP // Credit photo: GEOFFROY VAN DER HASSELT / AFP
8.12pm, 06 November 2024modified to
The main suspect in the murder of Philippine was indicted in Paris on Wednesday by an investigating judge, for “murder accompanied by another crime”, which makes him “incur criminal imprisonment for life”, indicated the Paris prosecutor’s office to AFP.
Extradition, an “informed choice” by Taha O.
Also indicted for repeat rape, Taha O. is currently appearing before a liberty and detention judge who must decide whether or not to pre-trial detain him. In the box, the Moroccan appeared hunched, his gaze fixed on the ground, before the magistrate declared the case closed. Afterwards, his lawyer did not wish to comment. The young man, with brown hair combed back and a brown beard, was extradited on Wednesday during the day from Switzerland, the country where he fled after the events and where he was arrested on September 24.
He was then presented to an investigating judge, who pronounced his indictment. In addition to the charges for murder accompanied by a repeat crime and repeat rape, Taha O. is also being prosecuted for repeat theft, as well as repeat fraud for acts committed in Montreuil, according to the prosecution. According to the public prosecutor, he remained silent before the magistrate.
France filed an extradition request on October 9 but the suspect initially refused to be extradited from Switzerland. His lawyer in this country, Me Florence Yersin, then announced that he had finally accepted this extradition “after having understood the ins and outs of the procedure”, believing that it was “an informed choice of his leaves.” He was heard again this Monday by the public prosecutor of the canton of Geneva and confirmed his consent to being handed over to France according to a simplified extradition procedure.
Sentenced to prison in France for rape
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 (OQTF), which provoked strong reactions, in particular from the far right. After this murder and the arrest of the suspect in Switzerland, the Minister of the Interior Bruno Retailleau also urged to “evolve (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 stressed in her letter, authenticated by AFP. “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,” he said. she writes.
