Unexecuted Deportation Order Haunts Parents of Slain Student

The body of Philippine, a 19-year-old student at the University of Paris-Dauphine, was found on Saturday, September 21, 2024 in the Bois de Boulogne. She died strangled as she was returning home in the middle of the afternoon. In the columns of Le Figaro, her parents, Loïc, a nuclear engineer, and Blandine, pay tribute to the memory of a young woman "courageous, radiant, intelligent". Her body is buried in the municipal cemetery of Montigny-le-Bretonneux (Yvelines), just behind the family home. "I am Catholic, I am convinced that Philippine is next to the Father. I buried my daughter, but I would need her to give me a sign. And maybe then I could let her go," her mother Blandine, a teacher, confided. A year later, she is unable to recover from her daughter’s death. "I haven’t moved an inch in a year, I’m half dead. Almost every day, I have little things to tell her, and it’s silence," she continues.

On September 24, 2024, Taha Oualidat, a 22-year-old Moroccan at the time of the events, had been arrested at the main station in Geneva as the main suspect in Philippine’s murder and had been extradited to France. The Paris prosecutor’s office had opened a judicial investigation for rape and homicide. He "is subject to a measure of obligation to leave French territory (OQTF). But this had not been executed at the time of this chance encounter with Philippine," the same source said. The sexual motive is favored due to Taha O.’s criminal record. He had been tried for a first rape on another student in the Taverny forest (Val-d’Oise) and had been convicted in 2021. Released in June 2024, "at the end of his sentence" according to the Paris prosecutor’s office and targeted by an OQTF, he had been placed in an administrative detention center in Metz, pending Morocco’s agreement for his deportation.

In the absence of this green light, the judge of freedoms and detention rejected a fourth extension of the detainee’s detention. He will be released, but placed under house arrest in a hotel in the Yonne where he has never gone. He will be registered in the file of wanted persons the day before the murder, on September 19, for not having respected his obligation to report. "This individual should never have been in her path," say Philippine’s parents. Her mother denounces: "It’s never anyone’s fault. Those who have failed in their duties have not had a word for Philippine, none have sent a wreath to her grave. This shows how little they feel guilty or responsible. [...] But we have enough pain not to bang our heads against the wall. Maybe I’ll be angrier when I have less pain."

She is also disgusted that part of the law carried by LR deputy Olivier Marleix, extending the maximum duration of detention for foreigners deemed dangerous, adopted by the National Assembly, was censored by the Constitutional Council in early August. "How can men and women take the risk that our young people will be murdered?" laments the mother.