France: Suspected Tunisian Serial Killer Under Arrest

A Tunisian migrant has been arrested in connection with four corpses found floating in the River Seine outside of Paris. Although he is currently only a suspect, police have tied him to the murder of four homosexual men in just 16 days.

The first body was found by a passerby in the river in Choisy-le-Roi, a commune in the suburbs of Paris. Police subsequently found three additional bodies.

The victims, according to the prosecutor’s office, are a 48-year-old Frenchman living in Créteil, a 21-year-old Algerian resident of Choisy-le-Roi, and two homeless men: another 21-year-old Algerian and a 26-year-old Tunisian.

The current suspect had his first hearing in front of a judge on Rue du Bastion in Paris (17th arrondissement) in the presence of his lawyer, Antoine Ory, who was unwilling to comment on the case.

At first, he tried to pass himself off as an Algerian named Ahmed Ben Ali, but authorities now know he is from Tunisia and is named Monji—”savior” in Arabic.

In France illegally, last week Le Parisien confirmed he was taken to the administrative detention center in Plaisir (Yvelines), where the police arrested him on Wednesday morning, and is subject to an OQFT.

A second person has also been taken into custody in relation to the case and is being questioned.

Presently, the authorities are pursuing the theory that the perpetrator is a serial killer and is targeting homosexual men. Le Parisien has confirmed that the first corpse identified, a 40-year-old male from Créteil, was a gay man.

“In the absence of confessions, it is impossible to be definitive. But the most plausible theory is that of serial crimes committed because of the victims’ real or perceived sexual orientation – homosexuality. A possible hatred against this community, the motives of which could be linked to the suspect’s thwarted sexuality, but also to his strict practice of Islam, discovered during the investigation,” wrote the paper.

Le Parisien further states that the police’s reasoning for this theory is that just a few hundred meters upstream from where the bodies were discovered, there is a known spot “where men meet at night for furtive sexual encounters.”

Furthermore, police investigators have connected the murder suspect to the murder victims. Police say one of the victims was even friends with the suspect and both of them were featured in photos together. The Tunisian suspect used the phone chip of one of the victims and then used the debit card of another victim.

The paper speculates that the killer may have taken them to his home, had sexual relations with them, and then dumped their bodies in the river. He has been in France for three years and residing illegally in the country for eight months.

The number of homeless and vulnerable has exploded along the Seine outside of Paris, ever since homeless people were expelled from Paris due to the Olympic Games.

While the first body discovered was “relatively well-preserved,” the other three were in “a very advanced state of decomposition,” the prosecutor’s office specified in a statement on Saturday. Two of the bodies also showed clear signs of violence.

Although all the victims were located in the same area, authorities are unsure if the corpses had been tossed into the Seine further upstream.