Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

CRIME

Husband arrested over brutal murder of French jogger

French police on Monday detained an IT worker whose wife was murdered while out jogging in a grisly case that shocked the country.

Published: 29 January 2018 15:43 CET
Husband arrested over brutal murder of French jogger
Alexia Daval, 29, was murdered while jogging. Her husband Jonathann (left) was arrested on Monday. AFP

The charred body of Alexia Daval, a 29-year-old bank employee, was found in a wood in October in Esmoulins, in the rural Haute-Saone area to the northeast of France's Burgundy wine-growing area.

She had been beaten and probably strangled, prosecutors said, before her killer set fire to her body and hid it under tree branches a few kilometres (miles) from her usual jogging route.

Her husband Jonathann, 34, said (pictured above left and below in the centre) at the time that his wife had gone out running and never came back.

Local prosecutor Edwige Roux-Morizot told AFP that police had detained Jonathann Daval at his home in Gray on Monday morning and taken him into custody. Officers were also carrying out a search of their home.

Daval, initially questioned as a witness, had told police he argued with his wife on the day before her disappearance, which he said explained why she
had scratches and bite marks on her hands.

Sources close to the investigation told BFM TV that police were working on the theory that a domestic dispute may have led to the murder.

The sources said the couple had had difficulty conceiving a child which had prompted real tension between the pair.

The case shocked the sleepy bucolic community where the couple live, with nearly 10,000 people turning out in their town of Gray for a silent march in her memory in November.

In November hundreds of people organised group running excursions across the country in tribute to the murdered young woman.

“With these sporting gestures, you are making Alexia into a strong symbol, one of the freedom for all women to enjoy running and to live,” her mother Isabelle Fouillot said through tears as she addressed the rally on Sunday.

Many of the 8,000 to 10,000 people who joined the march and listened to speeches from Daval's husband Jonathann and family brought white roses which were placed in front of her parents' tobacco shop in the town.

The husband has previously “denied any link to the murder of his wife”, according to his lawyer.

“The last time that I saw him, he confirmed to me that he was not in any way linked to the murder of his wife,” said Randall Schwerdorffer on Monday.

The lawyer had not spoken with his client since his arrest.

The local French prosecutor is expected to hold a press conference later on Monday to explain the arrest of the husband.

CRIME

Suspects in Paris Holocaust memorial defacement fled abroad: prosecutors

French police have tracked three suspects in last week's defacement of the Paris Holocaust memorial across the border into Belgium, prosecutors said.

Published: 22 May 2024 16:32 CEST
Suspects in Paris Holocaust memorial defacement fled abroad: prosecutors

The suspects were caught on security footage as they moved through Paris before “departing for Belgium from the Bercy bus station” in southeast Paris, prosecutors said.

Investigators added that the suspects’ “reservations had been made from Bulgaria”.

An investigation was launched after the memorial was vandalised with anti-Semitic image on the anniversary of the first major round-up of French Jews under the Nazis in 1941.

On May 14, red hands were found daubed on the Wall of the Righteous at the Paris Holocaust memorial, which lists 3,900 people honoured for saving Jews during the Nazi occupation of France in World War Two.

Prosecutors are investigating damage to a protected historical building for national, ethnic, racial or religious motives.

Similar tags were found elsewhere in the Marais district of central Paris, historically a centre of French Jewish life.

The hands echoed imagery used earlier this month by students demonstrating for a ceasefire in Israel’s campaign against the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza.

Their discovery prompted a new wave of outrage over anti-Semitism.

“The Wall of the Righteous at the Shoah (Holocaust) Memorial was vandalised overnight,” Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo said in a statement, calling it an “unspeakable act”.

It was “despicable” to target the Holocaust Memorial, Yonathan Arfi, president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF) wrote on X, formerly Twitter, calling the act a, “hateful rallying cry against Jews”.

French President Emmanuel Macron condemned the act as one of “odious anti-Semitism”.

The vandalism “damages the memory” both of those who saved Jews in the Holocaust and the victims, he wrote on X.

“The (French) Republic, as always, will remain steadfast in the face of odious anti-Semitism,” he added.

Around 10 other spots, including schools and nurseries, around the historic Marais district home to many Jews were similarly tagged, central Paris district mayor Ariel Weil told AFP.

France has the largest Jewish population of any country outside Israel and the United States, as well as Europe’s largest Muslim community.

The country has been on high alert for anti-Semitic acts since Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel and the state’s campaign of reprisals in Gaza in the months since.

In February, a French source told AFP that Paris’s internal security service believed Russia’s FSB security service was behind an October graffiti campaign tagging stars of David on Paris buildings.

A Moldovan couple was arrested in the case.

SHOW COMMENTS