The 78-year-old man, back in France after 20 years behind bars in Nepal for two murders, is suspected of having killed around 20 people in Asia in the 1970s.
“I have a lot of things to do. I have to sue many people,” Charles Sobhraj, nicknamed “the Serpent”, told AFP when he arrived in Paris on Saturday.
After 20 years behind bars in Nepal, the French serial killer has found France, and wants to clear his name. The one who calls himself “innocent” intends to attack Netflix and the BBC for the series The snakefiction released in 2021 inspired by his life.
France infowhich reveals this project, quotes the lawyer of Charles Sobhraj, Isabelle Coutant-Peyre:
“(This series) gives it a completely doctored reputation, where there’s only 30% truth,” she said.
“Everything was built on false documents”
Suspected of around 20 murders in 1970s Asia, the 78-year-old has spent the past 20 years in a Nepalese prison for the murders of two North American tourists.
Nepal’s Supreme Court ruled on his release on Wednesday saying he needed open-heart surgery and the move was in line with a Nepalese law allowing the release of bedridden prisoners who have already served three-quarters of their sadness. She then ordered that he be expelled within 15 days to France.
Charles Sobhraj arrived at Roissy Charles-de-Gaulle airport in Paris on a plane from Doha (Qatar) and was immediately taken care of by the police, noted an AFP journalist who was traveling with him. On the plane that took him to Doha, where he arrived in transit on Friday evening, the septuagenarian assured the AFP journalist that he was “innocent” of the crimes with which he is accused:
“I am innocent in all these cases, OK? (…) Everything was built on false documents,” he said.
He also intends to sue the State of Nepal: “The judge, without questioning any witness (…) and without allowing the accused to present the slightest argument, wrote the verdict”, a- he added. “The courts in Nepal, … all the judges, were biased.”
fake gem dealer
“It took more than nineteen years for him to regain his freedom and I am very happy and very shocked,” commented to the press Me Isabelle Coutant-Peyre, who came to pick him up at the airport. “He was unjustly sentenced on a file made with falsified documents by the Nepalese police. It’s a scandal, he is presented as a serial killer, which is completely false”.
A French citizen with a Vietnamese mother and an Indian father, Charles Sobhraj began traveling the world in the early 1970s and found himself in the Thai capital, Bangkok.
Posing as a dealer in gems, he befriended his victims, often Western backpackers on the trail of 1970s hippies, before drugging, robbing and murdering them.
“He despised backpackers, poor young drug addicts. He saw himself as a criminal hero,” Australian journalist Julie Clarke, who interviewed him, told AFP in 2021.
Dubbed the “bikini killer” in 1975 after the body of an American woman clad in a single bikini was found on a beach in Thailand, the man has been linked to more than 20 murders.
Convicted of two murders
Arrested in India in 1976, he spent 21 years in prison, a period marked by a brief escape in 1986 after drugging the guards. He was eventually arrested in the Indian state of Goa.
Released in 1997, he retired to Paris but resurfaced in 2003 in Nepal, where he was spotted in Kathmandu and arrested. The following year, a court sentenced him to life in prison for the 1975 murder of American tourist Connie Jo Bronzich. Ten years later, he was also found guilty of murdering the latter’s Canadian companion.
