PARIS (AFP) – A 22-year-old man suspected of murdering a Paris university student will be extradited to France from Switzerland today, a source close to the case told AFP.
The murder of the 19-year-old, identified only as Philippine, shocked France and prompted calls for further toughening of deportation and migrant detention laws.
The suspect, Taha O, a Moroccan national, agreed to the extradition last week after initially refusing.
On Monday, he was heard again by authorities in the canton of Geneva, and confirmed his consent to being handed over to France under a simplified extradition procedure, according to the Paris prosecutor’s office.
Philippine’s body was found half-buried in the Bois de Boulogne park in western Paris in September.
Taha O, who was arrested in Geneva, was subject to an order to leave France and had been released from a detention centre in June after serving a sentence for rape.
But after his release he failed to report to a hotel where he was ordered to stay while awaiting removal to Morocco, and was added to a list of wanted persons the day before the murder.
President Emmanuel Macron has called Philippine’s murder “a heinous and atrocious crime”, saying that “we need to protect the public better”.
Following a summer parliamentary election in which the far right performed strongly, several French politicians seized on the killing, demanding a crackdown on illegal immigration.
But rights groups and left-wingers said the focus should not be on immigration but rather on femicide.
