On 21 September 2024, the body of 19-year-old French woman Philippine Le Noir de Carlan (born 10 October 2004), was discovered in the Bois de Boulogne in Paris.The prime suspect, Taha Oualidat, was arrested in Switzerland on 24 September.https://www.lefigaro.fr/faits-divers/faux-mineur-isole-premier-viol-cache-a-sa-famille-nos-revelations-sur-taha-oualidat-de-son-arrivee-en-france-au-meurtre-de-philippine-20251106As he is in the country illegally, he is being extradited for possible indictment for rape followed by murder.
The case has sparked numerous media and political reactions within France, particularly with questions raised about the monitoring of people convicted of rape, the removal of people subject to an OQTF, the legal criteria allowing the judge to extend the administrative detention of an illegal immigrant and the issue of "double penalty", that is, sentencing someone to be deported to their country of origin in addition to the penal sanctions.
Background Philippine Le Noir de Carlan was born in Clamart on 10 October 2004 to a Catholic family of six children. The Le Noir de Carlan family belongs to the surviving French nobility of the Ancien Régime. The family originally hails from Brittany (Côtes-d'Armor) and was established as noble in 1669.
Philippine's mother is a mathematics teacher and her father is a physicist for the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission.
Philippine attended a private Catholic high school before starting a degree in economics and financial engineering at Paris Dauphine University. She was a scout leader and had been involved in the Scouts and Guides of France movement since childhood. A Catholic, she regularly attended the church of Saint-Pierre-du-Lac in Montigny-le-Bretonneux. By 2024, she lived in the 16th arrondissement of Paris in an apartment on next to her university and regularly travelled home to her family in Montigny-le-Bretonneux.
Events After her lunch at the Paris Dauphine University canteen on 20 September, Philippine Le Noir de Carlan was supposed to go to her parents' house in Yvelines. According to the missing person report, she was last seen at 2 p.m. When her relatives did not see her arrive, they attempted to contact her to no avail. That same evening, around 11 p.m., a relative of Philippine went to the police station in the 16th arrondissement of Paris. As procedure, an investigation into an urgent disappearance was opened. Her relatives then tried to geolocate the mobile phone, which was in the area of the Bois de Boulogne park.
A close friend of Philippine contacted Priscillia Routier-Trillard, founder of the mobile app , who activated an alarm to signal danger and was responsible for relaying a missing person notice to the app's network. The founder estimated to Le Parisien that "between our app, our social networks and emails, 300,000 people received the missing person notice. With the shares, we reached nearly a million Internet users.
At the family's request, around 50 people mobilized and organized a search for Philippine in the Bois de Boulogne in the afternoon of 21 September. The search party found the student's cell phone, and, about 20 meters away, abnormal shapes in the earth. Philippine's body was found partially buried. A security perimeter was then set up by the police. Investigators and scientific experts tried to collect as many clues as possible on site.
The medical examiners concluded that the cause of death was asphyxiation without strangulation.
The funeral was held on 27 September at the Versailles Cathedral, by Abbot . Around 1,800 people were present inside the cathedral with another 1,000 on the parvise.
Tributes On 23 September, the Paris Dauphine University community gathered in large numbers to pay tribute to Philippine Le Noir de Carlan, by observing a minute of silence in her memory. The president of the university, , expressed his full support to her family, her loved ones and her classmates.
Hanane Mansouri, a member of parliament belonging to the right-wing Union of the Right for the Republic party, organised a rally in tribute to Philippine in front of the Vienne courthouse in Isère. The rally was disrupted by a group of activists, including teachers, candidates for parliament, human rights activists, psychologists, and parliamentary assistant, who came to denounce "political recovery" by chanting the slogan "Siamo Tutti Antifascisti" (English: "We are all antifascists"). Coverage of the event resulted in three people, citizens or members of the New Popular Front, being targeted with online harassment, each of whom filed a complaint at the police station.
On 1 October 2024, a .
Legal proceedings
Police investigation and judicial instruction The media and political controversy sparked by the event overshadowed the speed of an investigation described by a judicial source as a "masterpiece of investigation". Without a genetic fingerprint at the crime scene, the turned to other leads and managed to isolate several decisive time sequences by analysing telephone traffic in the Bois de Boulogne district and Seine-Saint-Denis, where a cash withdrawal from an ATM in Montreuil was made with the victim's bank card. Thousands of pieces of data were then cross-referenced to identify the profile of a suspect, in particular through the use of video surveillance images from the bank where he made the withdrawal. The 22-year-old Moroccan suspect was arrested at Genève-Cornavin railway station in Geneva on 24 September 2024.
On 24 September, an investigating judge was put in charge of the investigation regarding the homicide and rape of Le Noir de Carlan. The judicial investigation covers in particular the offences of murder preceded, accompanied or followed by other crimes; rape, theft and fraud, all in a state of legal recidivism.
A crime scene reenactment is being carried out in the Bois de Boulogne, featuring the perpetrator escorted by police officers.
Extradition Since Switzerland is not a member of the European Union, the simplicity of the European Arrest Warrant did not apply in this specific case, and so an extradition request that complies with the requirements of Swiss law must be made. France and Switzerland are both parties to the European Convention on Extradition of 13 December 1957. This cooperation was increased on 10 February 2003 with the Agreement between France and Switzerland on the simplified extradition procedure. This agreement, ratified by the law of 13 October 2005, strengthened the extradition procedure between the two countries by allowing for the use of a simplified procedure, subject to the acceptance of the person targeted by the extradition. Thus, two extradition procedures coexist between France and Switzerland: a normal procedure and a simplified procedure.
France made the request on 9 October 2024 to the Swiss authorities for the extradition of the suspect on suspicion of the murder of Philippine Le Noir de Carlan in Paris on 20 September.
For this to have been made possible, the alleged offences must be punishable by law in both France and Switzerland, and in particular the facts must be punishable in each country by a custodial sentence or at a minimum a custodial security measure of at least two years, which was the case here for rape and murder. But the incrimination must not be based on a political motive, nor must the person be a Swiss national. If these conditions are met, extradition times can vary, according to Maître Philippe Fontana, a lawyer at the : "Either there is a classic procedure and given the media coverage of the case, it will only take a few weeks. Or there is a simplified extradition procedure and then it is a matter of only one month. Finally, if the person in question contests his extradition, it will take several months".
During a hearing by a Geneva prosecutor on 16 October 2024, the suspect refused his extradition by simplified procedure. The Swiss Federal Office of Justice received the content of this hearing planned on making a decision on the extradition in the following days. The suspect then had eight days to file an administrative appeal. In this case, the procedure could have taken "several weeks or even several months", but he was handed over to the French authorities on 6 November in Annemasse in Haute-Savoie, on the France–Switzerland border.
Suspect
Judicial history According to information transmitted by the BFMTV police service, the suspect was born in 2002 in Oujda, Morocco, and entered France in June 2019 via Spain at the age of 17 with a tourist visa. Shortly after his arrival, he was taken into care by the child welfare service in Val-d'Oise. In September 2019, he raped a 23-year-old student in Taverny. Identified through his DNA, he was arrested and placed in pre-trial detention. On October 5, 2021, he was sentenced by the Val-d'Oise juvenile assize court to seven years in prison for this rape, a reduced sentence because he was a minor at the time of the events. He was detained from 2019 and released at the end of his sentence in June 2024. On 18 June 2024, in an irregular situation in France since he had only entered the national territory with a three-month short-stay visa, he was notified of an obligation to leave French territory (OQTF) with a ten-year ban on returning. The same day, the French administration requested a consular pass (LPC) to Morocco. Upon his release from prison, he was placed in the administrative detention center (CRA) in Metz. His placement was extended three times. On 3 September, a judge of liberties and detention orders his release from the detention center. Before his release, the administration notifies him of a house arrest in a hotel located in Yonne, accompanied by an obligation to check in so that he does not attempt to evade the surveillance of the administration and the execution of his removal from the territory. Two weeks later, the 19 September 2024, he was entered in the file of persons wanted by the prefectural services because he did not respect his obligation to report. The murder of Philippine Le Noir de Carlan occurred the following day on 20 September.
Culpability of the legal system Questions over whether the murder of Philippine Le Noir de Carlan was avoidable, and whether dysfunctions in the legal system and administrative state led to the suspect's release and allowed the crime to take place, have been raised by many politicians and citizens. In an interview with Le Figaro on 2 October 2024, Minister of the Interior Bruno Retailleau stated that there were clearly dysfunctions, which are not new and which are recurring and that he asked the general inspection of his administration to take stock of this issue.
While some legal professionals such as Stéphane Maugendre (a lawyer specializing in immigration law ) and Olivier Cahn (a professor of French criminal law) believe that the legislative tools in force are sufficient. Others such as Béatrice Brugère, general secretary of the union, believe that in France, it is impossible to expel a foreign minor "even if he or she has committed crimes". At the same time, several political leaders, from both the right and the left, are questioning the criminal and administrative chain and certain dysfunctions. Five phases may raise questions: the execution of the sentence, how to prevent recidivism, why the suspect was not returned to the border after serving the sentence, consular passes and leaving the detention center. In the case of the suspect, the law was applied unevenly, in some cases being applied simply and other cases in a stricter interpretation.
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