A gas station in the center of Paris is out of service due to fuel shortages on October 10, 2022. A strike at TotalEnergies and ExxonMobil has led to fuel shortages at many service stations in France for ten days. Photo: VCG

Charles Sobhraj, a convicted killer who police believe killed more than 20 western backpackers on the "hippie trail" through Asia in the 1970s and 1980s, returned to France on Saturday after nearly two decades behind bars in Nepal.

Nepal's Supreme Court ordered the release of Sobhraj, known as the "bikini killer" in Thailand, and 'The Serpent" for his evasion of police, on Wednesday citing his advanced age and health.

A French national who was born to an Indian father and Vietnamese mother, Sobhraj, 78, landed at Paris' main international airport shortly after 7 am and was escorted off the plane by police for identity checks.

"He is well, he is a free man," Sobhraj's lawyer Isabelle Coutant-Peyre told Reuters. Asked what his next steps would be, she said: "He will file a legal complaint against Nepal because the whole case against him was fabricated."

Sobhraj had been held in a high-security prison in Nepal since 2003, when he was arrested on charges of murdering American backpacker Connie Jo Bronzich in 1975. He was later found guilty of killing Bronzich's Canadian friend, Laurent Carriere, and had served 19 years out of a 20-year sentence.

But he was suspected of more murders, including in Thailand, where police say he killed six women in the 1970s, some of whom turned up dead on a beach near the resort of Pattaya.

He was jailed in India for poisoning a group of French tourists in the capital, New Delhi, in 1976. In 2021, the BBC and Netflix produced a series based on the story of Sobhraj's alleged killings.

The statute of limitations for most serious crimes in France is 20 years.

Reuters