Calls for tougher prison rules in France as repeat offender rapes and murders teenage girl

A repeat offender has confessed to raping and murdering a 15-year-old girl in the eastern French city of Nantes, sparking outrage and calls for tougher release rules.

Published: 31 August 2020 16:01 CEST

Calls for tougher prison rules in France as repeat offender rapes and murders teenage girl

Illustration photo: AFP

Firefighters found the teenager's body 10 days ago in a burning, empty flat under renovation. The 45-year-old suspect strangled her with a cable, then started the fire to cover his tracks, prosecutors said.

The attacker spent 18 years in prison for nine rapes, three attempted rapes and a sexual assault. He was released in 2016.

Rachida Dati, justice minister from 2007 to 2009 under president Nicolas Sarkozy, told Europe 1 radio: “These kinds of criminals must not be left to go free.”

Dati put into place a preventive detention system in 2008, according to which an individual remains detained – even after they have finished serving their prison sentence – if they are considered dangerous.

“The Hollande government completely weakened (…) this measure and the current government has not put it back into place,” she said, referring to the 2012-2017 Socialist administration of president Francois Hollande who succeeded Sarkozy.

“The justice system is corrupted by the far left and its culture of excuses,” deputy-head of the far-right National Rally party, Jordan Bardella, told LCI television on Monday.

“When you represent a threat for French society, as was the case, you should not be allowed to leave prison,” Bardella said.

Critics say the system poses legal and fundamental rights problems as it amounts to imprisoning people for crimes that have not been committed.

No recent element indicated that the suspect might re-offend, Nantes deputy prosecutor Yvon Ollivier told a press conference Saturday.

After leaving prison, the suspect moved, got a job and found a partner. He saw a psychotherapist once every two months, Ollivier said.

“When there is such a tragic event, it is a failure for everyone,” he said.

The suspect was arrested on Saturday and currently being held in detention.

An investigation by France's General Inspection of Justice, which monitors the work of the judiciary, is underway to determine whether the individual had been monitored properly since prison.

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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.