Charles Sobhraj, a multiple convicted and convicted murderer, was released from Nepal prison on Friday morning after almost two decades. According to police, the 78-year-old Frenchman, nicknamed Had, for whom the Netflix streaming service created the series of the same name, is responsible for as many as 20 murders of Western tourists in Asia between 1972 and 1982. Victims were drugged, strangled, beaten, or burned.
After his release, Sobhraj has 15 days to leave Nepal, from where he will likely return to France. It was handed over to immigration authorities, according to AFP.
Sobhraj was originally supposed to be released on Thursday, but the date was delayed due to prior procedures, including a medical check-up. According to the British BBC’s report, the court decided to release the suspect on Wednesday, citing his age and good behavior. Sobhraj served 19 of the 20 years he was convicted.
Murder of western tourists
Sobhraj was found guilty in the 1975 murder of American tourist Connie Jo Bronzich by a Nepalese court in Kathmandu in 2004. Police arrested her in a luxury casino in Nepal’s capital after she returned to the country in 2003. Sobhraj has previously admitted to killing large numbers of Western tourists and is believed to have killed at least 20 people in Afghanistan, India, Thailand, Turkey, Nepal, Iran and Hong Kong in the 1970s.
But the 2004 decision in Kathmandu was the first time a court had found him guilty of murder. Sobhraj pleaded not guilty and his lawyers said the charges against him were based on assumptions. But a few years later, he was also found guilty of murdering the Canadian boyfriend of an American tourist.
He was imprisoned in India for poisoning a group of French tourists in the capital Delhi in 1976. But he managed to escape from the maximum security Tihar prison in 1986, when he shared a birthday cake filled with sleeping pills with the guards.
The killer that movies and books are about
Later, Sobhraj was caught on a beach in the Indian state of Goa. He claimed he fled to extend his sentence and avoid deportation to Thailand, where he faces multiple murder charges and most likely the death penalty.
He was imprisoned in India until 1997, after which he returned to France, the murders committed in Thailand are already timed. There was no news about him for a long time until he appeared in Kathmandu in 2003. Sobhraj was born on April 6, 1944, in Saigon, then French Vietnam, to an Indian father and Vietnamese mother. Four books and three documentaries have already been written about his life.
Source: Seznam Zpravy
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