A police car in Lille.
(illustration) -
PHILIPPE HUGUEN / AFP
A "domestic torturer" who took refuge in Switzerland to escape French justice was arrested twelve years after his conviction in France to five years in prison, the Besançon prosecutor announced Thursday.
The fifty-year-old was finally identified Tuesday during a road check in Saône-et-Loire, where he was discreetly installed "by imagining that the sentence was prescribed", entrusted the public prosecutor of Besançon, Etienne Manteaux, during 'a press conference.
"He remained a long time in impunity in Switzerland, but the French justice with the long memory and this sentence, twelve years after the facts, was executed", welcomed the prosecutor.
The former resident of Orchamps-Vennes (Doubs), now 55, fled to Switzerland in the early 2000s when he was under investigation for violence and sexual assault on members of his family.
A European arrest warrant had been issued
He was sentenced in 2008 in Besançon, in his absence, to five years in prison for "usual violence" on his wife and three children and "sexual assault by ascendant" on children.
"He was a domestic torturer who encouraged his son, for example, to beat his sisters to" become a man "," Etienne Manteaux recalled.
A European arrest warrant had been issued to ask the Swiss judicial authorities to arrest the accused, but it had never been handed over to the French authorities.
However, the French justice made sure to conduct regular investigative acts, so that the sentence is still not prescribed in 2020.
Presented to the Besançon prosecutor's office who notified him of his conviction, the man now has ten days to appeal his conviction.
He was remanded in custody until the end of the appeal period.
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