Fugitive wanted for 20 years found after being shipwrecked

• Thierry Ascione is suspected of being involved in the murder of a French restaurant couple committed in 1991 in Guatemala.

  He had vanished a few months before his trial in 2001.

• Tried for "complicity in murder, forgery and use of forgery and fraud", he was sentenced to life imprisonment.

• In early October, the 62-year-old man, who lived in Asia, was wrecked while traveling to New Caledonia on a sailboat.

  He was arrested by the Indonesian authorities and is being held in Manado pending determination of his fate.

End of the run for Thierry Ascione. Wanted for 20 years for a double murder, the Marseillais reappeared recently on the other side of the world after being shipwrecked in the Celebes sea, reveals this Monday

. The 62-year-old man, who was sentenced to life in 2001, was arrested in Indonesia on the basis of an arrest warrant issued by the Paris Court of Appeal in 2019. A request for extradition from the France is currently under review. "He only asks to return to explain himself", assures

his lawyer, Me Arthur Vercken. “It is only in France that we will be able to see whether the sentence pronounced at the time is prescribed or not. "

Sentenced to seven years in prison after a hold-up in 1983, Thierry Ascione is also accused of being involved in the murder of a couple of restaurateurs in December 1991 in Guatemala.

The mutilated bodies of Bernard Béreaud, 52, and his partner, Marie-Antoinette Perriard, 44, were found near Guatemala City, the capital of this Central American country.

A few weeks later, on January 29, 1992, two French people were arrested.

They are Jean-Philippe Bernard, the restaurant owner's nephew, and Philippe Biret, a friend.

Although claiming their innocence, both are sentenced to thirty years in prison by the Supreme Court of Guatemala.

A sentence they served in Pavon penitentiary.

Tried in his absence

The name of Thierry Ascione then appears in the investigation. Arrived in Guatemala in 1991 to sell trucks on behalf of the Fabre company, he left the country after the murders of these restaurateurs from Loiret. He won Miami, Florida where he cashed checks signed by Bernard Béreaud. Then left for Asia to go green, he was finally arrested in September 1995 at Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle on the arrival of a flight from Thailand where he had opened an import-export company. In May 2000, after spending four years and seven months in pre-trial detention - an exceptionally long period - he left Villepinte remand center in Seine-Saint-Denis.

Placed under judicial control, he settled in the Var, in Saint-Tropez. Before volatilizing. In his absence, he was tried by the Paris Assize Court for "complicity in assassinations, forgery and use of forgery and fraud". On June 5, 2001, he was sentenced to life imprisonment. For 20 years, Therry Ascione traveled discreetly between Asia and South America where he set up several companies. Sick for a few months, he would have decided, at the beginning of October, to return to France under his real identity for treatment. Especially since, according to his calculations, his conviction would be prescribed.

“He left the Philippines aboard his sailboat with a friend, their two dogs.

He told the Philippine authorities that they were going to New Caledonia, and gave them his real identity.

On the road, between Indonesia and the Philippines, they were caught in a storm which damaged all the electronic part of the boat.

They took refuge on a tiny island ”where they were arrested, explains its historical defender.

Without a passport, he is forced to stay on Manado Island although he has not been taken into custody.

A request for extradition formulated by France is being studied.

Thierry Ascione "vigorously contests the slightest guilt in this case" of assassination, continues Me Arthur Vercken.

The "difficulties" encountered by the examining magistrate

According to his client, "one of the probable reasons why the couple was murdered was that they were playing a double game. They had a very fancy restaurant and they had agreed, according to him, to sound the lounges. private to inform both the US DEA and the Guatemalan state ”. He observes that in his book, the examining magistrate, Gilbert Thiel, "reported difficulties" to investigate when he went to Miami at the time. "If he is arrested in France and retried at his request - he could also accept the conviction, he will obviously not - the question will be whether we will judge the case as it is or if we will relaunch an investigation . "

Contacted by

, the magistrate, now retired, recognizes that "the FBI did not make it easy for me in Miami".

But, he says, "it was only for questions of a different legal culture, it had nothing to do with the substance of the case."

For him, "the declarations of Ascione [which implicated a French politician] seemed largely to fall under the fable".

And the magistrate concluded: “In the end, if I sent him back to the assizes, it was because I considered the charges sufficient.

"

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• Miscellaneous

• Guatemala

• Police

• Investigation

• Assassination

• Indonesia

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