(Reuters) – Frenchman Charles Sobhraj, convicted of murder and considered a serial killer in 1970s Asia, landed in France on Saturday morning.
Nicknamed the “bikini killer” in Thailand and “the Snake”, 78-year-old Charles Sobhraj has been released from prison in Nepal where he spent almost 20 years in detention.
Nepal’s Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered the release of Charles Sobhraj citing his age.
The former detainee is also subject to a ten-year entry ban on Nepalese territory, an official from the Immigration Department said.
Born in Saigon, at the time in French Indochina, to a Vietnamese mother and an Indian father, Charles Sobhraj obtained French nationality after his mother’s marriage to a French soldier.
“He is fine, he is totally free,” his lawyer Isabelle Coutant-Peyre told Reuters after his arrival.
“He will launch a lawsuit against Nepal because the whole file was fabricated,” she added.
Charles Sobhraj had been held in a high-security prison in Kathmandu since 2003, when he was arrested for the murder of American tourist Connie Jo Bronzich in 1975. He was also convicted, several years later, of the murder of the Canadian companion of Connie Jo Bronzich, Laurent Carrière.
He is suspected of many other murders, including in Thailand, where police believe he drugged and killed at least six women in the 1970s.
During the flight, the “Serpent” told AFP that he was not guilty of the murders of Connie Jo Bronzich and Laurent Carrière and that the case against him was built on false documents.
“I have a lot to do. I have to sue a lot of people. Including the state of Nepal,” he told the news agency.
His story inspired a series co-produced by the BBC and Netflix, called “The Serpent”.
The French interior and justice ministries did not respond to questions from Reuters about whether he could face criminal charges in France.
The limitation period for a sentence relating to a crime is generally 20 years in France.
(Report Antony Paone and Richard Lough, written by Kate Entringer)