Funviralpark Charles Sobhraj, a convicted killer who police believe killed more than 20 Western backpackers on the “hippie trail” through Asia in the 1970s and 1980s, spent nearly 20 years in prison in Nepal. After being put in, he returned to France on Saturday.
Nepal’s Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered the release of Sovraj, known in Thailand as the ‘Bikini Killer’, citing his advanced age and poor health, citing ‘The Serpent’ to evade police.
Sobraj, 78, a Frenchman of an Indian father and a Vietnamese mother, landed at Paris’ main international airport just after 7am and was escorted off the plane by police for identification.
“He’s fine. He’s a free man,” Sobraj’s lawyer, Isabelle Kutemper, told Reuters. When asked what his next steps were, she said:
Sobhraj has been held in Nepal’s high-security prisons since 2003 when he was arrested for the murder of American backpacker Connie Jo Bronzich in 1975. He was then convicted of murdering her Bronzich’s Canadian friend, Laurent Carriere, and served 19 years in prison. of 20 years in prison.
But he was suspected of many more murders, including one in Thailand, where police said he murdered six women in the 1970s, some of whom died on a beach near a resort in Pattaya.
He was imprisoned in India for poisoning a group of French tourists in the capital, New Delhi, in 1976, before being brought to trial in Thailand.
Sobhraj told Agence France-Presse AFP that he was innocent of the killings of Bronzich and Carriere on a flight out of Nepal.
“I’m busy. I have to sue many people,” AFP quoted Sobhraj.
Associates had previously described Sobhraj as a crook, seducer, robber and murderer.
In 2021, the BBC and Netflix will produce a drama series based on the story of Sobraj’s alleged murder.
France’s interior and justice ministries did not respond to Reuters’ questions about whether Sobraj could face criminal charges in France. In France the statute of limitations for most serious crimes is he 20 years.
