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CRIME

Taxi driver’s mother: my son’s a good boy

The mother of an illegal taxi driver charged with the 2008 kidnapping and murder of a Swedish student in Paris on Wednesday asked a court to show leniency to her "good boy".

The trial of Bruno Cholet, 55, was suspended for 24 hours only 20 minutes after it began on Tuesday when he said he was feeling unwell and was sent to hospital for tests.

With the victim's family looking on from the front row, Cholet told the court Wednesday he was feeling well enough for the trial, which is scheduled to run until September 14, to continue.

He said his bout of ill-health was probably due to heatstroke and recounted what he said was a troubled childhood with him being pushed around in foster care like a "sack of potatoes".

"My schooling took place in jail," said Cholet, whose first brush with the law occurred at the age of 12 when he stole a bicycle.

He admitted to a delinquent adolescence spent on the streets of Paris and on the French Riviera and claimed he was raped by three sailors when he was about 14.

Cholet is charged with the murder of Susanna Zetterberg, a 19-year-old student from Stockholm, who he allegedly picked up in his taxi outside a Paris nightclub in April 2008.

Zetterberg's partially burnt body was discovered in a forest near Paris the day she went missing. An autopsy showed she had been shot at least four times in the head.

Police traced the crime to Cholet, who was allegedly found with a pistol, handcuffs and other material containing Zetterberg's DNA in his possession. A plastic bag with her name written on it was also allegedly found.

Cholet, a convicted rapist and armed robber, denies any involvement and claims police fabricated evidence.

His 77-year-old mother, who has recently undergone knee surgery and his father, who has to use a walker, were not present in court. But his mother sent a letter to the judge requesting leniency which was read out in court.

"My son is a good boy, don't be too hard on him", Marie-Louise Cholet wrote. "He lets himself get swayed easily …it's a mother who is writing to you with a lot of pain."

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CRIME

Detectives return to French village to solve missing toddler mystery

Investigators cordoned off a tiny village in the French Alps on Thursday to solve the mystery of a missing toddler whose disappearance last summer gripped the nation.

Detectives return to French village to solve missing toddler mystery

Emile, two-and-a-half, was staying with his grandparents for the first day of the summer holidays when he disappeared on July 8th last year.

Two neighbours last saw him in the late afternoon walking alone on a street in Haut-Vernet, a small settlement of 25 inhabitants at an altitude of around 1,200 metres.

The little boy, barely 90 cm (35 inches) tall, was wearing a yellow T-shirt, white shorts and tiny hiking shoes, according to a call for witnesses at the time.

A massive on-the-ground search involving dozens of police and soldiers, sniffer dogs, a helicopter and drones failed to find him in July.

It was called off after several days following a prosecutor saying it was unlikely such a young child would have survived in the summer heat.

An initial probe into a missing person soon became a criminal investigation into a possible abduction. But the options of an accident or a fall remain open.

French investigators have summoned 17 people, including family members, neighbours and witnesses, to re-enact the events of the day he disappeared.

They are to focus on the last few minutes during which Emile was seen by neighbours, trying to untangle their contradictory accounts.

The family’s “only hope is that the child is still alive, even if this hope fades from day to day,” the grandfather’s lawyer said.

To ensure no outside interference in the investigation, police cordoned off the village from the outside world on Wednesday morning. It will remain so until Friday morning.

Flights over the village are also forbidden.

Early on Wednesday morning, around 15 journalists huddled in the cold rain at the barrier cutting off access to the village, kept at bay by two police cars.

Some 20 investigators are to guide the re-enactment of events, with some flying drones above to film it all.

The boy’s grandfather was questioned in a 1990s case into alleged violence and sexual aggression at a private Catholic school, it has emerged.

But a source close to the case said his possible involvement in the disappearance had always been examined to “the same degree” as other hypotheses.

Emile had just arrived in Haut-Vernet to stay with his mother’s parents in their holiday home for the summer when he went missing.

His parents, devout Catholics living in the southern town of La Bouilladisse, were not present on that day.

His mother is the oldest of 10 children.

Emile was her first child and she also has a younger daughter.

Investigators received some 900 calls from members of the public in the case, all of which have been dismissed as unrelated.

They have also sifted through endless mobile data and call logs in the hope of finding a clue.

In late November, a day before Emile would have turned three, his parents published a call for answers in a Christian weekly.

“Tell us where he is,” they wrote.

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