The investigation into the disappearance of Nora Quoirin, a Franco-Irish teenager found dead a year ago in Malaysia where she was on vacation with her family, began on Monday, authorities said.
The teenager, who disappeared the day after her arrival from the Dusun Resort hotel, a tourist complex located 70 km from Kuala Lumpur, was found dead a few days in the forest. Intense searches had mobilized hundreds of people, helicopters and dogs.
A criminal act according to the family
The judicial inquiry, a procedure inherited from British law which aims to determine the causes of death, is to last a week and hear about sixty witnesses. “We are here to answer several questions: who is the deceased, when and how did she die and is anyone responsible? "Coroner" or inquest officer Maimoonah Aid said on the first day of a court hearing in Seremban town.
Malaysian police had found death from internal bleeding, ruling out any criminal act in the death of the 15-year-old girl with a mild mental disability and closed the case. But the family believes in a criminal track and had asked the Malaysian authorities to open an investigation to establish the causes of the death of their daughter. The autopsy concluded that she was probably dead from a hunger-induced internal bleeding after spending more than a week in the rainforest.
Parents interviewed by teleconference
Mohamad Mat Yusop, the police chief of the Malaysian state of Negeri Sembilan was the first of sixty-four witnesses called to appear during the investigation. He said he ordered a search as soon as he was informed of the girl's disappearance on August 4, 2019. "The family was in panic when I met her." "I assured the father that we would use all means to find the missing person," said the police chief.
Before the opening of the investigation, the parents had described the procedure as "a determining element in their quest for truth and justice for Nora". They said they hoped "that all the leads surrounding the disappearance of Nora will be studied and not just the thesis still favored by the police", in a press release. The teenager's Irish mother and her French father will not be present due to the restrictive measures taken to fight the coronavirus but will be interviewed by teleconference.
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