- Harris holds slight edge nationally over Trump: poll
- Chelsea edge Real Madrid in Women's Champions League, Lyon win
- Japan PM to dissolve parliament for 'honeymoon' snap election
- 'Diego Lives': Immersive Maradona exhibit hits Barcelona
- Brazil Supreme Court lifts ban on Musk's X
- Scientists sound AI alarm after winning physics Nobel
- Six-year-old girl among missing after Brazil landslide
- Nobel-winning physicist 'unnerved' by AI technology he helped create
- Mexico president rules out new 'war on drugs'
- Israeli defense minister postpones trip to Washington: Pentagon
- Europe skipper Donald in talks with Garcia over Ryder return
- Kenya MPs vote to impeach deputy president in historic move
- Former US coach Berhalter named Chicago Fire head coach
- New York Jets fire head coach Saleh: team
- Australia crush New Zealand in Women's T20 World Cup
- US states accuse TikTok of harming young users
- 'Evacuate now, now, now': Florida braces for next hurricane
- US Supreme Court skeptical of challenge to 'ghost guns' regulation
- Sparks fly as Orban berates EU 'elites' in parliament trip
- US finalizes rule to remove lead pipes within a decade
- Solanke hungry for second England cap after seven-year wait
- Gilded canopy restored at Vatican basilica
- Zverev scrapes through, Djokovic cruises to Shanghai Masters last 16
- Trump secretly sent Covid tests to Putin: Bob Woodward book
- Gauff answers critics: 'It's hard to win all the time'
- Neural networks, machine learning? Nobel-winning AI science explained
- China says raised 'serious concerns' with US over trade curbs
- Boeing delivers 27 MAX jets in September despite strike
- German 'Maddie' suspect could be free in 2025 after cleared of other sex crimes
- Italy seek Nations League consistency as Germany continue rebuild
- From boom to budgeting as reality bites for Saudi football
- Stock markets diverge as Hong Kong sinks, oil prices fall
- US trade gap narrowest in five months as imports slip
- Stay and 'you are going to die': Florida braces for next hurricane
- England 96-1 after Salman's century lifts Pakistan to 556
- Hollywood star Idris Elba champions African cinema in Ghana
- Djokovic rolls Cobolli to make Shanghai Masters last 16
- Milan's Hernandez receives two-game suspension after referee rant
- Geoffrey Hinton, soft-spoken godfather of AI
- Ex-Barcelona and Spain great Iniesta retires aged 40
- Duo wins Physics Nobel for 'foundational' AI breakthroughs
- German 'Maddie' suspect could be free in 2025 after cleared of separate sex crimes
- China slaps provisional tariffs on EU brandy imports
- Ex-skipper Skelton eyes Wallabies November return
- Spanish great Iniesta leaves indelible legacy after retirement
- Indian Kashmir elects first regional government in a decade
- Hong Kong stocks crash, oil prices retreat on fading China boost
- Man City accuse Premier League of 'misleading' claims after legal case
- Duo wins Physics Nobel for key breakthroughs in AI
- Agha defies England as Pakistan post 515-8 in first Test
'Serpent' serial killer Charles Sobhraj arrives in France after release
French serial killer Charles Sobhraj, responsible for multiple murders in the 1970s across Asia, arrived in France on Saturday after almost 20 years in prison in Nepal.
Nepal's top court ruled on Wednesday that he should be freed on health grounds and deported to France within 15 days.
On Friday, he was released and put on a flight at Kathmandu airport to take him to Paris via Doha. While on the flight to Doha, he insisted to an AFP journalist that he was "innocent".
Sobhraj's life was chronicled in the series "The Serpent", co-produced by Netflix and the BBC.
Posing as a gem trader, he would befriend his victims, many of them Western backpackers on the 1970s hippie trail, before drugging, robbing and murdering them.
"I feel great... I have a lot to do. I have to sue a lot of people. Including the state of Nepal," Sobhraj told AFP on Friday onboard the plane.
Asked if he thought he had been wrongly described as a serial killer, the 78-year-old said: "Yes, yes."
He landed in the French capital on Saturday morning, an AFP reporter confirmed.
On arrival at Paris, he was taken away by border police for extra "identity checks", according to an airport source.
The airport source said he was "not wanted" by the authorities in France and that once all the checks had been carried out, he would be able to leave the airport.
- 'Bikini killer' -
Born in Saigon to an Indian father and a Vietnamese mother who later married a Frenchman, Sobhraj embarked on an international life of crime and ended up in Thailand in 1975.
Suave and sophisticated, he was implicated in the murder of a young American woman, whose body was found on a beach wearing a bikini.
Nicknamed the "bikini killer", Sobhraj was eventually linked to more than 20 murders.
He was arrested in India in 1976 and ultimately spent 21 years in jail there, with a brief break in 1986 when he drugged prison guards and escaped. He was recaptured in the Indian coastal state of Goa.
Released in 1997, Sobhraj lived in Paris, giving paid interviews to journalists, but went back to Nepal in 2003.
- 'Karma' -
He was spotted in a casino playing baccarat by journalist Joseph Nathan, one of the founders of the Himalayan Times newspaper, and arrested.
"He looked harmless... It was sheer luck that I recognised him," Nathan told AFP on Thursday.
"I think it was karma."
A court in Nepal handed Sobhraj a life sentence the following year for killing US tourist Connie Jo Bronzich in 1975. A decade later, he was also found guilty of killing Bronzich's Canadian companion.
Talking to AFP among bemused fellow Qatar Airways passengers on Friday, Sobhraj insisted he was innocent of the killings in Nepal.
"The courts in Nepal, from (the) district court to high court to supreme court, all the judges, they were biased against Charles Sobhraj," he said.
"I am innocent in those cases, OK? So I don't have to feel bad for that, or good. I am innocent. It was built on fake documents," he added.
But on Thursday, Sompol told AFP he did not object to the release, as both he and the criminal he once pursued were now too old.
"I don't have any feelings towards him now that it's been so long," said Sompol, 90.
"I think he has already paid for his actions."
burs-rox/smw
O.M.Souza--AMWN