“The Serpent”: French serial killer Charles Sobhraj has arrived in Paris

He had first passed through Doha, in transit.

Then, this Saturday morning, the French serial killer Charles Sobhraj, linked to at least twenty murders in Asia in the 1970s and who inspired the Netflix series "The Serpent", arrived in Paris, the day after his release. in prison in Nepal.

On the plane taking him to Doha, where he arrived in transit on Friday evening, Charles Sobhraj, 78, said he was "innocent" to the AFP journalist on board.

Asked if he had been wrongly portrayed as a serial killer, he exclaimed, “Yes!

Yes !

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“I'm innocent in all these cases, okay?

(…) Everything was built on false documents, ”he said in this exclusive interview with AFP.

" I'm doing well.

I have a lot of things to do.

I have to sue many people including the State of Nepal,” he said.

“The judge, without questioning any witness (…) and without allowing the accused to present any argument, wrote the verdict,” he added.

“The courts of Nepal, (…) all the judges, were biased”.

France "obligated to grant" the extradition request

Nepal's Supreme Court, which ruled on his release on Wednesday, said Charles Sobhraj needed open-heart surgery and the move was in line with a Nepalese law allowing the release of bedridden prisoners who have already served three-quarters of their pain.

She ordered that the serial killer, imprisoned in this country since 2003 for the murder of two North American tourists, be deported within 15 days to France.

Framed by police wearing bulletproof vests, Charles Sobhraj, wearing a medical mask, had made no comment to the crowd of journalists who awaited him on his release from prison.

“The government of Nepal wants to send him back as soon as possible.

Sobhraj wants it too, ”said his lawyer Gopal Shiwakoti Chintan.

Before the announcement of his transfer, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs had indicated that France would welcome him if an extradition request was "notified" to him.

In this case, "France would be required to do so since Mr. Sobhraj is a French national", explained a spokesperson for this ministry, without further comment.

A French citizen with a Vietnamese mother and an Indian father, Charles Sobhraj began traveling the world in the early 1970s and found himself in the Thai capital, Bangkok.

Posing as a dealer in gems, he befriended his victims, often Western backpackers on the trail of 1970s hippies, before drugging, robbing and murdering them.

“He saw himself as a criminal hero”

“He despised backpackers, poor young drug addicts.

He saw himself as a criminal hero,” Australian journalist Julie Clarke, who interviewed him, told AFP in 2021.

Dubbed the "bikini killer" in 1975 after the body of an American woman clad in a single bikini was found on a beach in Thailand, the man has been linked to more than 20 murders.

Charles Sobhraj's other nickname, "The Serpent", comes from his ability to assume other identities to escape justice.

It became the title of a hit series made by the BBC and Netflix which is inspired by his life.

Read alsoThey crossed for real "the Serpent", the French serial killer Charles Sobhraj

Arrested in India in 1976, he spent 21 years in prison, a period marked by a brief escape in 1986 after drugging the guards.

He was eventually arrested in the Indian state of Goa.

Released in 1997, he retired to Paris but resurfaced in 2003 in Nepal, where he was spotted in Kathmandu and arrested.

The following year, a court sentenced him to life in prison for the 1975 murder of American tourist Connie Jo Bronzich.

Ten years later, he was also found guilty of murdering the Canadian companion of his previous victim.

Nadine Girès, a Frenchwoman who lived in the same building as Charles Sobhraj in Bangkok, told AFP last year that she initially found him "cultured" and impressive.

But in the end, "he was not just a trickster, a seducer, a thief of tourists, but a diabolical murderer".