The top appeals court in France on Wednesday ordered a retrial over the alleged murder of a Japanese university student who went missing while studying in the European nation in 2016, local media have reported.
According to the French media, the Court of Cassation decided to quash a lower court ruling sentencing Chilean national Nicolas Zepeda Contreras, 34, to 28 years in prison for murdering his former girlfriend, Narumi Kurosaki, a then 21-year-old student of the University of Tsukuba.
A French newspaper said that this extremely rare decision was due to a procedural error during an appeal trial for the case that violated the criminal procedure law.
Zepeda will not be released, with his retrial expected to take place in a court in the city of Lyon in the coming months.
During the appeal trial held in 2023 at a court in Vesoul, eastern France, a police officer who investigated the case testified using new evidence that was not submitted at the initial trial. Zepeda's side insisted on the unfairness of the testimony, but the presiding judge continued the proceedings. After the ruling, the defense argued that this constituted a criminal procedure law violation and filed an appeal.
According to prosecutors, Zepeda visited Kurosaki in the eastern city of Besancon, where she was studying, in December 2016 and killed her in her dormitory room. While her body was likely abandoned somewhere remote, police have not been able to locate it.
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