Court sketch made on December 4, 2023 showing Nicolas Zepeda before the Haute-Saône Assize Court in Vesoul, at the opening of his appeal trial for the assassination of Narumi Kurosaki (AFP / Benoit PEYRUCQ)
“I did not kill Narumi” Kurosaki: on the first day of his appeal trial, Monday in Vesoul, where he must answer for murder, the Chilean Nicolas Zepeda contested any involvement in the disappearance in 2016 of his ex-girlfriend Japanese friend.
“I dispute with all my strength the facts with which I am accused,” declared the accused, in French, for his first speech before the Haute-Saône Assize Court. “It’s been a real nightmare. Seven years have passed (since the disappearance), I carry Narumi in my thoughts. I think of the enormous grief in his family, which I carry with me all the time. I have no not killed Narumi”, he maintained, visibly moved, in front of a packed room, in which the victim’s mother and two sisters were notably seated.
“The family comes without any hope, neither revelation, nor confession, nor truth from Nicolas Zepeda. They have mourned it, maintaining this hope would be extremely destructive,” declared Sylvie Galley before the hearing , the lawyer for the family of Narumi Kurosaki, whose body was never found. “If the family is here today, it is for one and only reason: to honor Narumi’s memory.”
She deplored “the temporality” of this appeal trial, which opens seven years to the day after December 4, 2016, the last day Narumi Kurosaki was seen in public, which has an “extreme” emotional impact on those close to her. “.
Humberto Zepeda, Nicolas Zepeda’s father, speaks to the press on December 4, 2023 in Vesoul, before the opening of his son’s appeal trial (AFP / Sebastien Bozon)
The father of the accused, Humberto Zepeda, expressed the desire to see his son exonerated at the end of this “new trial”. “No one can say with certainty today that Narumi is dead. Scientifically, it is impossible,” he stressed before the hearing.
“We are in the 21st century. A country as developed as France cannot sentence a person to 28 years (reclusion) on a hypothesis,” he added, in reference to the verdict pronounced at first instance by the court of Assizes of Besançon, in April 2022.
– Arrived without warning –
“It is a difficult trial that awaits us, impossible some would say, but we are ready to do everything possible so that this second trial is different from that of first instance,” declared Renaud Portejoie, one of the Chilean’s lawyers.
The attorney general, Etienne Manteaux, who will bring the accusation during the three-week hearing, for his part expressed his “determination”.
Photos of Narumi Kurosaki are displayed on the desk of his family’s lawyer, Me Sylvie Galley, on the first day of Nicolas Zepeda’s appeal trial, December 4, 2023 in Vesoul (AFP / Sebastien Bozon)
During a university stay in France, the 21-year-old Japanese student met Nicolas Zepeda on December 4, 2016, arriving without warning after crossing the Atlantic, several weeks after their breakup.
The former lovers had returned together to the room rented by Narumi Kurosaki in a university residence in Besançon, after having dined at the restaurant. The same night, “screams of terror” woke up many students, but none called the police.
And in the following days, messages were sent from Narumi Kurosaki’s email address and Facebook account. Nothing proves, however, that the young woman was still alive: Nicolas Zepeda knew Narumi’s identifiers, and investigators believe that he knowingly distributed these messages to cover his escape, time to take the plane back to South America. South.
– New psychiatric expertise –
Once in Chile, he rejoiced to his cousin that his country had “no extradition agreement with France”. It took all the tenacity of the investigating judge and the prosecutor, who went to Santiago in person, to finally obtain his extradition.
Aware that in the first instance each party had stuck to its positions, Renaud Portejoie hopes that this second trial will “change the situation”, and intends to provide “another reading of the case”. To this end, he had a new psychiatric assessment carried out and could rely on new witnesses at the hearing.
Above all, Nicolas Zepeda himself approaches this new meeting at the assizes differently: he is no longer held in solitary confinement, and has learned French in prison: “it will change the exchanges, mechanically. The course of the trial will be different, and no doubt that the perception we will have of Nicolas Zepeda will be different”, estimates Sylvain Cormier, the other defense lawyer.