France filed a request with Swiss authorities on Wednesday for the extradition of a 22-year-old Moroccan man suspected of the murder of Philippine, a 19-year-old Parisian student, French Justice Minister Didier Migaud announced Thursday morning. “France will, of course, insist that this person be tried in France,” added the minister. The request “was made by France on time. Now the procedure must take its course.”
A judicial investigation was opened in France for rape and homicide after the discovery, on September 21, of the body of Philippine, a 19-year-old student at Paris-Dauphine University, found buried in the Bois de Boulogne, in the west Parisian. Taha O., a 22-year-old Moroccan, is the main suspect. He was arrested in Geneva on September 24. “He is today detained in Switzerland, so there is a guarantee regarding his detention,” assured Didier Migaud.
The suspect had already been convicted in 2021 for rape in France, 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 in eastern France. Upon his release, he was placed under house arrest in a hotel in Yonne, a French department about 150 km southeast of Paris, where he had never been. Having failed to comply with his obligation to report, he was included in the wanted persons file the day before the murder, September 19.
He was under an obligation to leave French territory, provoking strong reactions in the country, in particular from the far right. Coming from the conservative right and taking a hard line on immigration, the French Minister of the Interior, Bruno Retailleau, had urged to “evolve” France’s “legal arsenal”.
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