This Friday, July 24, 2020 marks a turning point in the Narumi affair, this Japanese student who disappeared in December 2016 in Besançon (Doubs). Chile has acceded to the request for extradition of Nicolas Zepeda formulated by the French justice, which suspects this 29-year-old man of having murdered the young woman and of getting rid of her body.
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Chilean authorities handed the suspect over to French police on Thursday July 23 at Santiago airport. Nicolas Zepeda boarded an Air France flight, which landed this Friday morning around 11 a.m. at Roissy - Charles de Gaulle airport, according to the Flight Aware website. The Chilean is expected to be notified of the execution of his international arrest warrant in the next few minutes.
The young man will then be transported to Besançon to be presented to justice. He could be indicted for "murder" and remanded in custody. He is defended by Me Jacqueline Laffont, lawyer at the Paris bar. Narumi Kurosaki's family is represented by Me Sylvie Galley, from the Besançon bar.
34 months of investigation
In early December 2016, Narumi Kurosaki had disappeared from her student residence, four months after arriving in Besançon to study French at the Center for Applied Linguistics. On December 4, the 21-year-old had dinner with her ex-boyfriend Nicolas Zepeda. The two young people then went to the student's room. Witnesses had heard screams.
Nicolas Zepeda then left the student residence. Investigators suspect him of disposing of Narumi Kurosaki's body in a Jura forest before flying to Chile on December 7. The young woman's corpse has never been found and the young man denies without failing to have killed his ex-girlfriend, who had started a new relationship shortly before the tragedy.
In January 2017, an investigation was opened for "murder". In October 2019, the Besançon prosecutor's office announced the closure of the investigations and the formulation of a request for extradition of Nicolas Zepeda " so that he appears before the Besançon Assize Court for the assassination of Narumi Kurosaki ". Chilean justice had given the green light to this extradition in April 2020.