Missing French exchange student found dead

The 23-year-old French student who had been missing for two weeks in southern Sweden was found dead on Wednesday night, with police stating that they no longer suspected any foul play.

Published: 24 January 2013 10:36 CET

Missing French exchange student found dead

The student, Samuel Babin, was found dead in a wooded area in Karlskrona just after 8pm on Wednesday.

"Samuel Babin was found dead yesterday night by the Blekinge Police dog patrols," the police wrote in a statement.

"There is no longer any suspicion of any criminal activity."

Babin was last seen on January 11th at the Blekinge Institute of Technology and his mysterious disappearance led officers to suspect he was kidnapped.

"He's a nice and easygoing guy who has a lot of friends," one friend told the Expressen newspaper on Tuesday.

"I don't think he had any enemies."

Police launched a search party in the area together with the Missing People organization.

The body was identified late on Wednesday night, and Babin's family has been notified.

"Our thoughts are with the relatives, rest in peace Samuel," wrote Missing People in announcing on their Facebook page that the case had been closed.

Babin's disappearance and death is not the first time a foreign student enrolled at the Blekinge Institute of Technology has done missing and later been found dead.

Last year, Indian graduate student Dheeraj Reddy Donthi disappeared from his student flat in late January.

His body was discovered in early April in a river flowing into Ronneby harbour.

TT/The Local/og

This story first appeared in The Local Sweden

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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.