‘Free man’ Charles Sobhraj lands in Paris

Nepal’s Supreme Court orders release of Sobhraj citing his advanced age and health: Charles Sobhraj. : File picture

Reuters   |   Paris   |  25.12.22 : 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, returned to France on Saturday after nearly two decades behind bars in Nepal.

Nepal’s Supreme Court ordered the release of Sobhraj on Wednesday citing his advanced age and health.

A French national who was born to an Indian father and Vietnamese mother, Sobhraj, 78, landed at Paris’s main international airport shortly after 7am and was escorted off the plane by the police for identity checks.

”He is well, he is a free man,” Sobhraj’s lawyer Isabelle Coutant-Peyre told Reuters. Asked what his next steps would be, she said: “He will file a legal complaint against Nepal because the whole case against him was fabricated.”

Sobhraj had been held in a high-security prison in Nepal since 2003 when he was arrested on charges of murdering American backpacker Connie Jo Bronzich in 1975.

He was later found guilty of killing Bronzich’s Canadian friend, Laurent Carriere, and had served 19 years out of a 20-year sentence. 

Sobhraj told AFP on the flight out of Nepal that he was not guilty of murdering Bronzich and Carriere. ”I have a lot to do. I have to sue a lot of people,” AFP quoted Sobhraj as saying.

Siberia old-age home fire kills 22

A fire ripped through an old people’s home in Russia’s Siberia region, killing 22 people, investigators said on Saturday.

The blaze gutted the second floor of the building, which was not officially registered as a home for the elderly, but was out by the early hours when rescuers finished combing the rubble in Kemerovo city, state media and emergency services said.

Many homes for the elderly operate without authorisation in Russia, officials said, meaning they were considered private property and not subject to inspections.

The RIA news agency, citing city authorities, said breaches of fire safety regulations could have been the cause for Friday night’s disaster in the city, 3,600km east of Moscow.

Kemerovo saw one of the deadliest fires in Russia of recent times when a blaze swept through the upper floors of the “Winter Cherry” shopping centre in 2018, killing 64 people.