SANTIAGO: Chilean Nicolas Zepeda was extradited on Thursday from Chile to France where he will face possible trial over the 2016 murder of his Japanese ex-girlfriend, police said.
The Air France plane carrying the 29-year-old, who was handed over to French police earlier in the day, left the Chilean capital Santiago just after 3.30pm.
It was the latest stage in a three-and-a-half year battle by prosecutors in the French town of Besancon to bring to trial the only suspect in the murder and disappearance of Narumi Kurosaki, a case that has gripped the press in Japan and France while largely passing under the radar in Chile.
Earlier on Thursday, Etienne Manteaux, the public prosecutor in Besancon, said Zepeda had been “handed over to French police at the Santiago airport. He will therefore appear in Besancon” on Friday.
Kurosaki, then 21, vanished from her university in Besancon, near the French Alps in December 2016 after eating with Zepeda.
By the time her disappearance was reported days later, Zepeda had returned to Chile.
French investigators believe he killed Kurosaki in a jealous rage – but her body was never found, despite extensive searches.
Zepeda, 29, had been under house arrest with police surveillance in the seaside resort of Vina del Mar, 120km west of Santiago.
His extradition ends a legal process in Chile that began in March when authorities finally accepted a request from French prosecutors to hand him over.
The process was delayed and complicated by the novel coronavirus pandemic and the closing of borders.
“It’s the start of the second phase of the investigation, perhaps with twists in this phase,” said Manteaux, who praised the “exceptional” speed with which Chilean authorities responded to France’s extradition request.
“He will appear before the examining magistrate (on Friday) ahead of his possible indictment for murder.”
Should he be indicted, Manteaux said he would ask that Zepeda be held in pre-trial detention.
‘We will never forgive’
This was the third extradition of a Chilean to France, and comes even though French authorities refuse to send former Chilean guerrilla Ricardo Palma Salamanca back to his homeland to stand trial for the 1991 murder of right-wing senator Jaime Guzman.
The plane is expected to land at the Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris at 10.55am on Friday, after which Zepeda will be taken to Besancon.
“Three years have passed since my beloved daughter disappeared … I pray that Nicolas will be tried in France, I would give my life for this,” said Kurosaki’s mother Taeko in a moving letter presented to the court in Chile.
“We will never forgive Nicolas, who took Narumi’s life and her from the whole family.”
According to investigators, Zepeda went to Besancon at the beginning of December 2016 to see his former girlfriend.
On the evening of Dec 4, the pair entered her residence together.
French prosecutors say several students heard “howls of terror, cries” that night, but nobody called the police.
Zepeda, the son of a wealthy Chilean family, met Kurosaki in Japan in 2014.
At the time of her disappearance, the pair had broken up and she was in a new relationship, which prosecutors said angered Zepeda, who threatened Kurosaki in an online video he later removed.
Investigators said that in the days before her disappearance, Zepeda flew to France, hired a car and drove to Besancon to meet her.
On the way, they said he stopped to buy matches, flammable liquid and bleach at a supermarket.
Zepeda was questioned in April last year by a Chilean judge in the presence of French investigators. He denies any hand in Kurosaki’s disappearance.
Zepeda is due to be represented in France by Jacqueline Laffont, who once defended former French president Nicolas Sarkozy in a corruption case.
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