Australian woman charged in France over 2016 disappearance of Frenchman

French police have charged an Australian woman over the 2016 disappearance of a Frenchman she allegedly shared a hotel room with in Andorra, an informed source said Monday. The woman had been arrested at Paris Charles de Gaulle airport last month.

Published: 16 December 2019 23:11 CET

Australian woman charged in France over 2016 disappearance of Frenchman

Andorra. AFP

The woman has been charged with the “kidnapping, arbitrary detention and abduction” of the man, named as 31-year-old Florent G, her defence counsel Simon Despierre told AFP.

Relatives of the missing man from the western city of Nantes had requested the case be kept out of the public eye after the woman was arrested on November 28 at Paris's Charles de Gaulle airport, the source said.

Despierre said the 59-year-old was formally placed in detention two days later after questioning.

The circumstances of the case remain unclear.

Florent G was last seen at a hotel in Andorra and his family reported him missing after he did not return to France from the small landlocked country in the Pyrenees mountains, the source said.

He was said to be a proponent of “woofing”, a practice that allows tourists to work on a farm in exchange for room and board.

There is no indication of how he came into contact with the Australian woman, reportedly a doctoral student in architecture who stayed with him in the hotel, according to the Nantes daily Presse Ocean.

“Later, she would say she saw the door of their room open and traces of blood inside and that she did not know what could have happened to her companion,” Presse Ocean reported.

“She told the examining magistrate she did not harm Florent G,” Presse Ocean added.

The Nantes public prosecutor declined to comment on the ongoing case.

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The French Jewish community, the third largest in the world, has for months been on edge in the face of a growing number of attacks and desecrations of memorials.

“National police in Rouen neutralised early this morning an armed individual who clearly wanted to set fire to the city’s synagogue,” Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Police responded at 6.45 am to reports of “fire near the synagogue”, a police source said.

A source close to the case told AFP the man “was armed with a knife and an iron bar, he approached police, who fired. The individual died”.

“It is not only the Jewish community that is affected. It is the entire city of Rouen that is bruised and in shock,” Rouen Mayor Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol wrote on X.

He made clear there were no other victims other than the attacker.

Two separate investigations have been opened, one into the fire at the synagogue and another into the circumstances of the death of the individual killed by the police, Rouen prosecutors said.

Such an investigation by France’s police inspectorate general is automatic whenever an individual is killed by the police.

The man threatened a police officer with a knife and the latter used his service weapon, said the Rouen prosecutor.

The dead man was not immediately identified, a police source said.

Asked by AFP, the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office said that it is currently assessing whether it will take up the case.

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

There have been tensions in France in the wake of the October 7th attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas on Israel, followed by the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip.

Red hand graffiti was painted onto France’s Holocaust Memorial earlier this week, prompted anger including from President Emmanuel Macron who condemned “odious anti-Semitism”.

“Attempting to burn a synagogue is an attempt to intimidate all Jews. Once again, there is an attempt to impose a climate of terror on the Jews of our country. Combating anti-Semitism means defending the Republic,” Yonathan Arfi, the president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF). wrote on X.

France was hit from 2015 by a spate of Islamist attacks that also hit Jewish targets. There have been isolated attacks in recent months and France’s security alert remains at its highest level.