Serial killer “The Serpent” Charles Sobhraj arrives in France after his release from a Nepalese prison

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Issued on: 12/24/2022 – 08:46

French serial killer Charles Soubrage, responsible for multiple murders in the 1970s across Asia, arrived in France on Saturday after nearly 20 years in prison in Nepal.

Nepal’s Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that he should be released on health grounds and deported to France within 15 days.

On Friday, he was released and put on a flight at Kathmandu airport to take him to Paris via Doha. During his trip to Doha, he insisted to an AFP journalist that he was “innocent”.

Sobhraj’s life has been chronicled in the series ‘The Snake’, which is co-produced by Netflix and BBC.

Posing as a gem dealer, he would befriend his victims, many of whom were Western backpackers on the hippie trail in the 1970s, before drugging, robbing and killing them.

“I feel great… I have a lot to do. I have to sue a lot of people, including the state of Nepal,” Sobhraj told AFP on Friday on the plane.

Asked if he thought he had been wrongly labeled a serial killer, the 78-year-old said: “Yes, yes.”

An AFP correspondent confirmed that he arrived Saturday morning in the French capital.

An airport source said he was taken away by border police upon his arrival in Paris for further “identity checks”.

The airport source said he was “not wanted” by the French authorities and that once all checks were completed, he would be able to leave the airport.

“Bikini killer”

Born in Saigon to an Indian father and a Vietnamese mother who later married a Frenchman, Sobhraj embarked on a life of international crime and ended up in Thailand in 1975.

Suave and sophisticated, he was implicated in the murder of a young American woman, whose body was found on the beach in a bikini.

Nicknamed the “Bikini Killer”, Sobhraj was eventually linked to more than 20 murders.

He was arrested in India in 1976 and spent 21 years in prison there, with a short break in 1986 when he drugged prison guards and escaped. It was caught in the Indian coastal state of Goa.

Released in 1997, Subraj lived in Paris, giving paid interviews to journalists, but returned to Nepal in 2003.

‘Karma’

He was spotted in a casino playing gambling by journalist Joseph Nathan, co-founder of the Himalayan Times, and arrested.

“He seemed harmless… It was fortunate for me that I recognized him,” Nathan told AFP on Thursday.

“I think it was karma.”

A court in Nepal handed down a life sentence to Subraj the year after the murder of American tourist Connie Jo Brunsich in 1975. A decade later, he was also convicted of killing Brunsich’s Canadian companion.

Speaking to AFP amid confused Qatar Airways passengers on Friday, Sobhraj insisted he was innocent of the Nepal killings.

He said that “the courts in Nepal, from the District Court to the High Court to the High Court, all the judges, were biased against Charles Subraj”.

He added, “I’m innocent in those cases, okay? So I don’t need to feel bad for it, or I’m fine. I’m innocent. It was built on false documents.”

It was Thai police officer Sompul Suthimai – whose work with Interpol was instrumental in securing the arrest in 1976 – that had pushed for Subraj’s extradition to Thailand and his trial for murder there.

But Sumpole told AFP on Thursday that he did not object to his release, as he and the criminal he was pursuing are getting old.

“I don’t have any feelings for him now that it’s been so long,” said Sumpul, 90.

“I think he has already paid the price for his actions.”

(AFP)

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