The demands for stricter immigration laws grew stronger in France after a Moroccan migrant was arrested for allegedly murdering a Paris student.
The victim, identified as a 19-year-old girl named Philippine, went missing last week. Her body was later found in a Paris forest.
“Philippine was on her way home to her parents’ house west of Paris when she disappeared. She was described as a quiet, model student by her colleagues and was involved in the scouting movement,” the BBC reported.
The 22-year-old suspect was arrested in Switzerland. The suspect, an illegal Moroccan migrant, had previously been convicted of several crimes, including rape. The man was not deported from France despite a rape conviction.
“According to the prosecutors, the man was convicted in 2021 of a rape committed in 2019, when he was a minor,” UK newspaper Guardian noted. “In early September, a judge freed him on condition he reported regularly to the authorities.”
France24 TV reported the details of the gruesome murder:
France’s conservative interior minister on Wednesday vowed consequences after a Moroccan man suspected of murdering a 19-year-old university student and leaving her body in a Paris forest was arrested in Switzerland.A source close to the case, speaking to AFP, identified the alleged attacker as a 22-year-old man of Moroccan nationality. Prosecutors have said the suspect had been previously convicted of rape and had been the subject of an order to leave France.The killing of the student is expected to further inflame political tensions in France where the newly installed right-wing government plans to crack down on immigration.”This is an abominable crime,” said Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau.Retailleau, who on Monday took over from his predecessor Gerald Darmanin, has vowed to boost law and order, tighten immigration legislation and make it easier to deport foreigners convicted of crimes.”It is up to us, as public leaders, to refuse to accept the inevitable and to develop our legal arsenal, to protect the French,” he added.”If we have to change the rules, let’s change them.”Authorities have only released the first name of the victim, Philippine.A Moroccan national was arrested on Tuesday in the Swiss canton of Geneva and was identified as a suspect in a murder committed in Paris, a spokeswoman for the Swiss justice ministry told AFP.”The Federal Office of Justice then ordered detention for extradition purposes on the basis of an arrest request from France,” she added.The student had last been seen at the university on Friday.Witnesses had reported seeing a man with a pickaxe, said one police source.
The illegal immigrant, arrested in connection with the murder, has a long criminal record. “Taha O., aged 22, had been sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment, by a juvenile criminal court in the northern Paris region on October 5, 2021, for a rape committed in 2019, while he was a minor,” the French newspaper Le Monde reported Thursday.
The suspect “had been detained in 2019, and released at the end of his sentence in June 2024, according to the Paris prosecutor’s office, which opened a judicial investigation on Tuesday into charges of ‘murder,’ as well as ‘rape, theft and fraud, all offenses committed in a state of recidivism’,” the newspaper added.
The mainstream media is upset over French government’s move to tighten immigration laws, fearing a vindication of country’s right-wing National Rally (RN) party.
“France’s new government is open to toughening immigration laws, the interior minister said on Wednesday, under pressure from the far-right National Rally (RN) after the arrest of a Moroccan man suspected of murdering a 19-year-old woman in Paris,” Reuters reported Monday.
“Marine Le Pen’s RN party, which holds major political sway over Prime Minister Michel Barnier’s newly installed government, has jumped on the murder of the young student,” the news agency complained.
The French move comes as other European countries are getting tough on illegal immigration, which has been fuelling violent crime and Islamic terrorism across the continent.
Earlier this month, Germany introduced passport controls on all border crossings. “Germany has announced that it is tightening checks at its land borders in a bid to control ‘irregular migration’,” Euronews TV channel reported on September 10. “Interior Minister Nancy Faeser told a press conference that the new border checks would limit migration and ‘protect against the acute dangers posed by Islamist terrorism and serious crime.'”
In Holland, Geert Wilders’ right-wing coalition government is leading the charge against mass-migration. “The Netherlands is looking to use crisis laws to reduce the number of asylum seekers entering the country,” Germany’s state-run DW TV reported mid-September. “The new government, led by nationalist Geert Wilders’ anti-Islam PVV party, said on Friday it would declare a national state of emergency so that it could alter certain asylum laws.”
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