Global Courant
A French fugitive convicted of the murder of two compatriots in Guatemala three decades ago was arrested this Friday in Amsterdam, coming from Indonesia, where he had been detained for more than a year and a half.
Thierry Ascione, 64, was convicted in France in 2001 of the 1991 murder of two Frenchmen who ran a restaurant in Guatemala, and was on the run for years.
He was detained in Indonesia on immigration grounds in 2021 after his yacht was damaged off the island of Sulawesi. Since then, the Indonesian authorities have attempted to deport him to France on several occasions.
Ascione was detained at the Amsterdam-Schipol airport by the Dutch police when he got off the plane from Jakarta, under an international arrest warrant and a red notice issued by Interpol.
“I can confirm that we have arrested a 64-year-old Frenchman this morning at Amsterdam-Schipol airport. He is wanted in France for a murder case,” a spokesman for the border police told AFP.
“He will later be extradited to France,” he added.
According to the French embassy in Jakarta, Ascione left Indonesia on Thursday night after receiving a travel permit from the French authorities in order to return to his country.
The fugitive’s lawyer confirmed his arrival in Amsterdam and said he had been placed in detention, pending a hearing on his arrest warrant, on Tuesday.
“Her state of health is very worrying,” Salomé Cohen, a lawyer, told AFP.
Ascione, a small fraudster from Marseilles convicted multiple times by the courts, arrived in Guatemala in 1991 to try to sell trucks.
He was found guilty of organizing the murder of a couple of French restaurateurs living in the Central American country, in December 1991, in order to keep their money, accusations that Ascione always denied.
A fugitive after the events, he was arrested in 1995 at the Paris airport, then released on parole in 2000. He disappeared six months before the start of his trial.
A French court sentenced him in absentia in 2001 to life imprisonment.
Ascione was a fugitive in various countries, including the Philippines, until he was arrested in Indonesia.
Indonesian immigration authorities have tried in recent months to deport him to France, according to his lawyer, but the airlines have refused to do so without an escort.
