Serial Killer Charles Sobhraj reaches France

French serial killer Charles Sobhraj, responsible for multiple murders in the 1970s across Asia, reaches France on Saturday after almost 20 years in prison in Nepal.

On Friday, he was released and put on a flight at Tribhuwan International Airport to take him to Paris via Doha.

He landed at Paris’ main international airport on Saturday morning and was escorted off the plane by police for identity checks.

Sobhraj was freed after a court ruled in favour of his age and good behaviour. A provision in Nepalese law allows inmates who have shown good character and completed 75% of their jail term to be released.

Sobhraj, a Frenchman of Indian and Vietnamese parentage committed a string of murders throughout Asia in the 1970s.

He has been linked to more than 20 killings between 1972 and 1982, in which the victims were drugged, strangled, beaten, or burned.

He was lodged in Kathmandu central jail in 2003 on charges of traveling with a false passport and for the murders of American tourist Connie Jo Boronzich, 29, and Canadian Laurent Carrière, 26, in 1975.

The Supreme Court had sentenced him to life in prison for murdering an American tourist, Connie Joe Bronzich, in 1975 in Nepal. In 2014, he was convicted of killing Laurent Carriere, a Canadian backpacker, and given a second life sentence.

Before his two convictions in Kathmandu, Sobhraj had already spent two decades in jail in India for poisoning a busload of French tourists.