Security agents surround the “Serpent” at the prison exit (Photo: Chandra Bahadur Ale Gorkha / AFP) French assassin Charles Sobhraj, known as “The Serpent”, who committed a series of murders in Asia in the 1970s, was released this Friday been (23) from a prison in Nepal.
Sobhraj, 78, who inspired the Netflix series Paradise and the Serpent, was taken to immigration authorities where he will be deported to France, police said.
The Frenchman had been imprisoned in this Himalayan republic since 2003 for the murder of two American tourists.
Nepal’s Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered Sobhraj’s early release on health grounds and his expulsion to France within a maximum of 15 days.
He was due to leave prison Thursday, but logistical and legal issues delayed his release.
Prison authorities told AFP that after receiving the relevant court documents, they would hand Sobhraj over to the immigration authorities.
“As soon as he is handed over to the immigration authorities, the next steps will be decided. He has a heart condition and wants to be treated at Gangalal Hospital in Kathmandu,” said lawyer Gopal Shiwakoti Chintan.
The “serial killer” underwent openheart surgery in 2017. The release from prison is in line with Nepalese law, which the court says allows the release of critically ill prisoners who have served 75% of their sentences.
Refined
The French Foreign Ministry said it had not yet received a request for Sobhraj’s expulsion from the government of Nepal.
If the application is served, France is obliged to comply with it because Sobhraj is a French citizen,” a ministry spokesman said.
Charles Sobrahj, a Frenchman of Vietnamese and Indian descent, began touring the world in the early 1970s until he arrived in the Thai capital of Bangkok.
Pretending to be a jewelry dealer, he befriended his victims, including many western backpackers whom he drugged, robbed, and killed.
“He hated backpackers, saw them as young, poor and drug addicts,” said AFP’s Australian journalist Julie Clarke, who interviewed Sobhraj. “He thought of himself as a criminal hero,” he added.
Supple and cunning, he is said to have committed his first murder in 1975, killing a young American woman whose body was found on a beach in 1975. Dubbed the “bikini killer,” he has been linked to more than 20 murders.
The other nickname, “The Serpent” came from her ability to assume other identities to escape justice and became the title of the hit Netflix and BBC series based on her life.
Arrested in India in 1976, he spent 21 years in prison, with a brief release in 1986 when he fled and was arrested again in the coastal state of Goa.
Released from prison in 1997, he lived in Paris, where he was paid for interviews, but returned to Nepal in 2003. He was spotted in the tourist area of Kathmandu and arrested at a casino.
The following year, a court sentenced him to life in prison for the 1975 murder of American tourist Connie Jo Bronzich.
A decade later he was convicted of the murder of Bronzich’s partner, a Canadian.
From behind bars, Sobhraj maintained his innocence in the two deaths and said he had never been to Nepal prior to the trip that landed him in prison.
Nadine Gires, a French woman who lived in the same building as Sobhraj in Bangkok, told AFP last year that he was “cultured and polite”.
“He was not only a scammer, seducer and tourist thief, but also a vicious murderer,” he commented.