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A Chilean man lodged an appeal on Wednesday over a ruling sentencing him to 28 years in prison for murdering his former girlfriend, a Japanese woman who came to France as an exchange student in 2016 and later went missing, his lawyer said.
Nicolas Zepeda, 31, has consistently denied the allegation that he had killed Narumi Kurosaki, who came to study in Besancon, eastern France, and went missing at age 21 in the same year.
A local French court on Tuesday handed down the prison term to Zepeda and determined that his crime was premeditated, in line with what prosecutors had claimed.
Narumi Kurosaki. (Photo courtesy of Besancon police)(Kyodo)
But the sentence by the court, which deals with the most serious crimes, turned out to be lighter than the lifetime imprisonment, the maximum sentence, that prosecutors had sought.
The appeal will be examined again by a jury.
France does not practice capital punishment.
The prosecutors had indicted him believing that he murdered Kurosaki over a quarrel. Her body was never found despite a massive search by investigators.
The court did not disclose the reasoning behind the ruling, made following five hours of deliberations involving judges and jurors in a trial that began in March.
Zepeda came to Japan to study at the University of Tsukuba near Tokyo in 2014 and started dating Kurosaki, who was a student at the university.
She later went to France as an exchange student in September 2016. They broke up in fall of that year.
Kurosaki has been missing since she dined with Zepeda and returned with him to her university dorm in Besancon on Dec. 4, 2016. Some students who were at the dormitory told investigators they heard a scream, which served as circumstantial evidence pointing to Zepeda as the suspected killer.
Shortly after Kurosaki’s disappearance, he returned to his native Chile.
French authorities launched an official murder investigation after the suspect was extradited from Chile in July 2020.
Related coverage:
Chilean man gets 28 yrs in prison for killing Japanese ex-girlfriend
Life term sought for Chilean accused of killing Japanese woman
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