Jonathan Coulom was kidnapped in a holiday center in 2004 -

FRANK PERRY / AFP

The mystery surrounding the Jonathan case looms as the trail of the German killer grows stronger.

Martin Ney, detained in Germany after having committed several kidnappings and murders of children, must indeed be handed over to the French authorities on Friday to be heard on the death of this 10-year-old French schoolboy kidnapped in 2004 in a holiday center in Saint- Brévin, in Loire-Atlantique, we learned from legal sources.

“He's coming on Friday.

He will be imprisoned pending his first appearance before the examining magistrate, ”said the Rennes general prosecutor.

The Nantes examining magistrate will then decide on a possible indictment in this case almost 17 years old.

Confession to an inmate

A European arrest warrant had been issued against the German Martin Ney in October 2019. The hypothesis of his responsibility has, among others, been explored for a long time by investigators and this track was relaunched in April 2018 by indirect confessions, between prisoners.

Martin Ney's fellow prisoner then claimed to have taken the confession of this criminal, already sentenced to life in 2012 for the murder of three children in northern Germany.

The examining magistrate will hear Martin Ney "probably in the course of next week", said Me Catherine Salsac, lawyer for Jonathan's mother.

"This track has been privileged from the start", she added because "the investigators had found similarities between the operating methods" but "the procedure then accelerated when he confessed to his fellow prisoner that he was came to France and that he was undoubtedly responsible for the kidnapping of Jonathan ”.

The body found at the bottom of a pond

Jonathan, originally from Cher, was kidnapped during the night of April 6 to 7, 2004 in a holiday center in Saint-Brévin-les-Pins, near Saint-Nazaire.

His body had been discovered after several weeks of research, on May 19, tied up and weighted with a concrete block in a pond near Guérande 25 km from the place of the kidnapping.

The investigation then skated, despite the completion of more than 1,500 DNA samples.

The track of the German criminal had existed since 2011, without being able to be confirmed.

“We are in serenity, we are not in impatience.

17 years have passed so there is a certain hindsight, there is still a suffering of course but it is no longer the same ", declared Me Salsac, stressing that his client needed" to have a name. , a face and a trial ”to“ be able to mourn ”.

Society

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Justice

Loire-Atlantique: An arrest warrant against a German suspected of the death of little Jonathan

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  • Murder

  • Germany

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