French Outrage at Tipping Point After Student’s Rape and Murder by Moroccan with Criminal Past

The Fdesouche website recalls the main stages in the life of Taha O., the 22-year-old Moroccan arrested in Switzerland on suspicion of Philippine’s murder.

In 2019, having entered France legally while still a minor, he raped a 23-year-old woman. He was sentenced to seven years imprisonment but did not serve the full sentence and was released after five years. In June 2024, an obligation to leave French territory (OQTF) was issued against him, and he was taken to a detention centre awaiting deportation. He had to wait for the agreement of his country of origin, Morocco, and for a consular pass to be issued. On September 3rd, a judge decided to release him. A few days later, Morocco gave the go-ahead for the deportation, but it was too late.  He had disappeared, flouting his obligations: clocking in and out and of house arrest in a hotel. On September 19th, the day before Philippine’s murder, he was on the national file of wanted people.

Tongues are wagging and testimonies are multiplying from people who had dealings with Taha O., and who knew how dangerous he was—yet, he was left at large with culpable negligence.

The police officer who had to deal with the first rape, which earned Taha O. a seven-year prison sentence in 2019, spoke to the press. According to him, at the time, the young woman, who was attacked while walking in the woods, owed her survival only to her extraordinary ability to talk to and deceive her adversary with unusual composure: she pretended to be ready to start seeing the man who had just attacked her. For the police officer, there was no doubt that Taha was ready to kill the young woman, who was lucky enough to escape thanks to this trick.

At the beginning of September, the man was questioned by the French justice system for the fourth and final time, while being held in a detention centre. “I don’t understand why I’m still in the centre. I want to leave France,” he said at the time. The judge in charge of examining his case recognised that, with his conviction for rape,

he has thus undermined the safety of individuals and that, in view of this criminal conviction and the personal situation of the person concerned, who has no accommodation, social or professional integration, and no income, the risk of repeating criminal acts, and therefore the threat to public order, cannot be ruled out.

Clearly, it was obvious to the judicial authorities that the young man was on the way to doing it again, but this did not prevent them from releasing him. Pierre-Marie Sève, Director of the Institute for Justice, points out that this was not simply a case of an individual decision, but that everything in current French law is designed to “knowingly organise impunity” and encourage the release of offenders. Hence the abnormally high rate of repeat offences, as pointed out by analyst Marc Vanguard, a specialist in security and immigration statistics on X.

Another controversial issue is the conditions under which a migrant slated for deportation is returned to his country of origin. In this instance, an administrative error caused the case to drag on, delaying the Moroccan authorities’ response. But all too often, OQTFs are not enforced because of the negligence of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which is incapable of gaining the respect of the offenders’ countries of origin to obtain the consular passes required for their deportation.

An accumulation of choices and flawed practices that we must not resign ourselves to.

According to Alexis Brézet, editor-in-chief of Le Figaro, interviewed on Europe 1 radio:

We want to shout against the acceptance of the inevitable and the defeat of the will of some. Powerlessness is not a fate. What’s the point of politics if it can’t protect a young girl leaving university?

For Philippine’s fellow students, the tragedy has been a wake-up call for those who still thought that insecurity was a distant issue that didn’t concern them: “We realise that it’s real,” said a student her age, also at Paris-Dauphine University.

Within the political class, anger and indignation are on the rise at a pivotal moment in the political news, since a new Minister of the Interior and a new Minister of Justice are now in power. They can show the public what they are capable of, but we will surely have to wait a long time for results. The Interior Minister is on the Right, the Justice Minister on the Left, and they will be irreconcilable when it comes to taking decisive action.