Murder of Paris student fuels anger at failed deportation

The murder of a 19-year-old female student in an affluent Paris neighborhood is sparking renewed calls from the French right for stricter immigration measures.

The young woman, identified only as Philippine, was found on Saturday, partially buried in the Bois de Boulogne park on the western outskirts of the city.

She was last seen on Friday around noon, just a few hundred meters from the Paris-Dauphine University campus, where she was studying economics.

The suspect, a 22-year-old Moroccan man, was apprehended in Geneva on Tuesday and is awaiting extradition to France. He had recently been released from a French prison after serving five years for the 2019 rape of a student.

Identified by French media as Taha O., the suspect was under a deportation order from France, which had not yet been enforced.

This case marks an early challenge for France’s new hardline interior minister, Bruno Retailleau, who took office last week and vowed to prioritize restoring order. “It is our duty as public officials to amend our legal framework to protect the French,” he stated on the social media platform X.

The far-right National Rally (RN) seized on the murder as more evidence of the laxity of the French judicial system.

“This migrant had no right to be here, but he was able to offend again in total impunity. Our justice is too lenient; our state is dysfunctional. It is time for the government to act,” said the RN’s president, Jordan Bardella.

With more than 120 members of parliament, the RN has leverage over the minority government of Prime Minister Michel Barnier because it can decide at any time to support a vote of no confidence and potentially bring it down.

Some left-wing politicians joined calls for greater effectiveness in carrying out expulsion orders.

The suspect “should have gone straight from prison to plane”, said Socialist party leader Olivier Faure.

Currently, fewer than 10% of French expulsion orders are carried out, according to government figures.

Sandrine Rousseau of the Ecologists said the murder was a “femicide” which should be “punished severely”. But she warned that the far right would “exploit it to spread its racist and xenophobic hate”.

Philippine’s disappearance led to an alert on a phone app called The Sorority, whose network of members are pledged to come to the help of women in distress.

Philippines did not have the app, but The Sorority said it issued a “missing persons notice” on Saturday to encourage members to join the search.

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.

Her killing has raised fears about safety in the Bois de Boulogne, which abuts the expensive areas of Paris’s 16th arrondissement (district).

The park has long been a center of prostitution but local residents say parts have become increasingly frightening in recent years, because of the presence of drug addicts and other suspicious characters.