2023-12-04 16:17:46
Nicolás Zepeda has three weeks to convince the jury in this new appeal trial being held in Vesoul, in eastern France. The Chilean claims his innocence. “I refute with all my strength the facts of which I am accused (…) I did not kill Narumi,” said the accused, after the president of the court read the indictment. This Monday marks seven years since the disappearance of the Japanese woman.
First modification: 12/04/2023 – 15:17
2 min
Nicolás Zepeda, 32, was sentenced to 28 years in prison in April 2022 for the premeditated murder of Narumi Kurosaki, perpetrated in 2016, but he appealed this first instance sentence. He now faces life imprisonment again.
The new trial, which will last until December 22, coincides with the seventh anniversary of the disappearance of the 21-year-old Japanese girl in Besançon (east), where she was studying French.
The prosecution maintains that Zepeda traveled by surprise to this French city, spent the night of December 4 to 5 with Kurosaki, asphyxiated and strangled her before throwing her body into the Doubs River. Zepeda and Kurosaki had broken up a few months earlier. For the prosecution, the Chilean killed her because she never got over the breakup. The two had met in Japan in 2014.
“Screams of terror” were heard in room 106, the one occupied by Narumi Kurosaki, according to the testimony of other students. “It seems like they are murdering someone. I’m scared,” a student wrote to a friend in a message at 3:21 in the morning.
No corpse or confessions
Justice accuses him of having disappeared the body and then of having impersonated her identity on social networks, hacking her accounts, to pretend that Kurosaki was still alive. In this way, she was able to buy time and flee to her country, Chile. He was then extradited to France in July 2020 to stand trial.
The file is 8,000 pages long, investigators have been mobilized in France, Japan and Chile, and there is an avalanche of incriminating evidence but no body and even fewer confessions. The jury at the Vesoul Court of Appeal has three weeks to determine the defendant’s responsibility. (with AFP)
A photograph obtained from the social network Facebook on January 4, 2017 and uploaded to that platform on November 4, 2016 shows Japanese student Narumi Kurosaki FACEBOOK/AFP
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