France has rejected the extradition request for Father Johannes Rivoire, accused of sexual assault on young Inuit in Canada in the 1970s, Canadian authorities said on Wednesday, who say they are exploring other avenues.
The Public Prosecution Service of Canada (SPPC) explains in a press release that the French government refused the request because French law prohibits the extradition of its own citizens and that “too much time has elapsed between the events and laying of charges”. This last point also prevents the French authorities from prosecuting Father Rivoire in France, the statement said.
Johannes Rivoire, who currently lives in a retirement home in Lyon, is the subject of a Canadian arrest warrant for having sexually assaulted a child in the Canadian Arctic between January 1974 and December 1979.
The religious had already been targeted by a first arrest warrant between 1998 and 2017 for sexual assaults against three minors.
For his part, Johannes Rivoire had again denied all the allegations during a meeting organized in September with a delegation of Inuits who came to support the request for extradition to France. “All possible legal remedies to obtain the extradition of Johannes Rivoire from France or his prosecution in this State have been exhausted,” concluded the SPPC.
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Canada’s Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations, Marc Miller, said in a tweet that it was “sorry to see this grave injustice happening again”, while stressing that there were still leads that could lead to the father’s arrest. Rivoire.
The criminal service specifies that it is working in concert with the federal police so that Interpol disseminates a wanted notice that could lead to the arrest of Johannes Rivoire in another country.