By RFPosted on 22-11-2019Modified on 22-11-2019 at 12:23
End of the run for one of the most sought after couples in Europe. Franco-Ivorian Jean-Claude Lacote and his partner Hilde Van Acker were arrested in Abidjan on Wednesday and Thursday by the Ivorian authorities. Fugitives who have traveled the world for more than twenty years.
It was a stalking that lasted since 1996, when the Franco-Belgian couple was suspected of murdering Marcus John Mitchell, a British businessman, in Belgium. First detained by the Belgian authorities, an alibi allows them to flee for Brazil, for several years.
But it was during the 2000s that Jean-Claude Lacote reappeared in Johannesburg as a producer of Duty Calls, a reality TV show about the work of the South African police. The man will then be jailed in Johannesburg for attempted kidnapping. He managed to escape in 2008 with the help of his companion Hilde Van Acker before taking refuge in Zimbabwe.
Towards an extradition?
Condemned, in absentia, in 2011, to life imprisonment by the Belgian courts, the couple was among the most wanted people in Europe by Europol and the FBI. It is therefore in Abidjan that they were arrested by the Ivorian authorities on Wednesday and Thursday.
If we do not know yet since when they resided in the country. Both had changed their identity and Jean-Claude Lacote had even managed to obtain Ivorian nationality. They now have fifteen days to ask to be retried by the Belgian justice pending their possible extradition.
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