Murder of Paris student fuels anger at failed deportation

The murder of a 19 year-old female student in an exclusive neighbourhood of Paris is fuelling new calls from the French right for tougher action on immigration.

The body of the young woman, named only as Philippine, was found on Saturday, half-buried in the Bois de Boulogne park on the western edge of the capital.

She had last been seen on Friday lunchtime a few hundred metres away, as she left the Paris-Dauphine university campus where she was studying economics.

The suspected killer was traced to Geneva, where he was arrested on Tuesday and awaits deportation to France.

He is a 22 year-old Moroccan man who was released from detention in France earlier this month after serving five years for raping a student in 2019.

Named by French media as Taha O, he was the subject of an expulsion order from France, which had not been carried out.

For France’s hardline new interior minister Bruno Retailleau, it is a first test after he took office last week promising that his top three priorities would be to “establish order, establish order and establish order.”

“It is up to us as public officials to … change our legal arsenal in order to protect the French,” he said on the X social media platform.

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.

Philippine 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 centre 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.