By Sudeshna Sarkar, IANS
Kathmandu : Making a fresh effort for the release of Charles Sobhraj, who has been fighting a murder conviction in Nepal since 2003, his lawyer in Paris has asked the French president to intervene.
Her client is victim of anti-French racism, French lawyer Isabelle Coutant-Peyre has said.
The maverick lawyer, who in the past has defended such controversial figures as Carlos the Jackal, one of the world’s most wanted terrorists, in her letter to French President Nicolas Sarkozy has reminded him of his election pledge that he was the “President of all French citizens, without any exception”.
“You have shown your determination in seeking the release of those who are arbitrarily or unjustly incarcerated, anywhere in the world, whether they be French citizens by blood or whether France has granted them French citizenship,” Coutant-Peyre’s letter has said.
“You have succeeded in getting the release, from Libyan jails, of Bulgarian nurses and of one Palestinian doctor, from Tchadian prisons of some French and Spanish citizens, and you are now applying a lot of effort and perseverance to obtain the release of a French-Colombian citizen,” she has noted in the letter sent to the presidential palace.
“I am, therefore, turning to you, as the defence lawyer for Charles Sobhraj, a 63-year-old French citizen, who has been incarcerated in Kathmandu (Nepal) since Sep 2003.”
The lawyer has written to Sarkozy that Sobhraj was “clearly the victim of an anti-French racist attitude on the part of the Nepalese police and judicial authorities, who keep on persecuting him by means of fake judicial procedures, on the basis of false documents”.
She has also pointed out that Nepal’s courts have been delaying Sobhraj’s trials and verdicts.
According to the fiery Coutant-Peyre, Sobhraj should have been released on Dec 19.
Nepal’s supreme Court was scheduled to deliver its final verdict in the case of the 1975 murder of an American tourist, but the judges put off the judgement and ordered the reopening of another minor case that had already been resolved, Coutnt-Peyre noted.
Reminding Sarkozy that his intervention caused the trial of a French citizen in N’Djemana to be speeded up, the lawyer has asked him to intervene with Nepal’s Girija Prasad Koirala government.
“Charles Sobhraj has been held hostage in Nepal since September 2003, despite the lack of any concrete charge or evidence against him, due to racist prejudices,” she said. “He is entitled to your help.”
However, it remains to be seen if the French president will involve himself in Sobhraj’s affairs in Nepal.
Coutant-Peyre had also approached the French Quai d’Orsay (foreign ministry), asking it to intervene but was put off on the ground that there were procedural problems.