The 47-year-old suspect, released from prison just five weeks earlier after serving an 18-year sentence for serial rapes, was traced within an hour after the 21-year-old victim memorised his number plate.
A convicted serial rapist who had been out of prison for barely five weeks has been arrested on suspicion of abducting a 21-year-old student at knifepoint and raping her during a three-hour ordeal in southern France.
The suspect, a 47-year-old man from Gardanne, was traced in under an hour after his alleged victim memorised his car’s registration plate — a detail that proved decisive once she escaped and a manhunt was launched. He was arrested in the Les Milles district, around a 12-minute drive from the young woman’s home. The Aix-en-Provence prosecutor’s office confirmed the arrest, and the suspect was placed in police custody as an investigation was opened into kidnapping, unlawful confinement and rape. As of Friday evening, he had not been formally charged or publicly identified, with the most recent French reporting describing him as still in custody while the investigation continued.
According to police, the student was seized outside her halls of residence — the Résidence universitaire Les Gazelles in Aix-en-Provence — shortly after midnight in the early hours of Friday. Local media reported that she had stepped outside to get some air in the heat when a man pulled up in a car and forced her inside at knifepoint, before driving towards a hill overlooking the city.
During the journey, the woman managed to dial 17, the French emergency number, without speaking. A police source told La Provence that call handlers grasped the gravity of the situation immediately upon hearing the attacker’s “extremely violent remarks.” Her abductor, however, spotted the phone and switched it off, frustrating attempts to trace the vehicle. An investigator told the newspaper that although officers could not locate the car in time, the silent call allowed them to identify the woman and contact her parents to establish where she lived.
Police say the man then drove her to a secluded spot, where he raped her at knifepoint. She escaped after roughly three hours in captivity.
Investigators subsequently discovered the suspect had an extensive record of sexual offences. According to local media, he was sentenced in 2013 to 18 years in prison for a series of rapes — a term that La Dépêche reports included a 12-year minimum-security period, with the man having been incarcerated since 2010. He was released on 6 June this year after completing his sentence, meaning the new allegations surfaced roughly 34 days after he walked free. He was also already the subject of a separate police investigation into kidnapping, unlawful confinement and rape.
The case follows another shocking incident in France, in which a boy reported to be ten years old was charged with attempted murder and rape after allegedly ambushing a 22-year-old woman jogging through the Gouëdic Valley park in Saint-Brieuc, Brittany. Julien Wattebled, the city’s public prosecutor, said the boy approached the woman and ordered her to undress; when she refused, he allegedly produced a knife and stabbed her twice — once in the arm and once in the abdomen — before running off. He was arrested following a week-long manhunt.
