charles sobhraj interview bbc 1997

t was 1977 and my boyfriend and I were working as journalists in New York. He denied the murders, fed a media frenzy, and eventually went to trial. Richard speedily learned the arts of bribery and corruption and arranged regular access to interview him. Nepal's Supreme Court upheld . Since then, however, his release kept getting delayed in 2017, he had a heart surgery and then came the Covid pandemic. While you might not be able to track down the interview footage, Sobhraj definitely became a media star following his release, reportedly talking to reporters for hefty sums after settling down in Paris. There was a narcissism about him, perhaps best captured in a photograph of him that police found in which he is lying naked on a bed, proudly displaying an erection for the camera. "If you use it to make people do wrong it's an abuse," he said. I told him what I knew, that the Russians said that they had an isotope that could act as a trigger for nuclear bombs "It was a hotel on the M20 junction," Dhondy recalled. Well, you already know about it After Masood Azhars release following the Indian Airline hijacking incident (in 1999), The Indian Express had mentioned my role with the Government of India at that time. We were way out of our depth Richard Neville and Julie Clarke. But unfortunately for political historians, Sobhraj wasn't present. So much so, I came on a business visa as an assistant producer for a French production company, Gentleman Films Prod. By chance, shortly after the call, a couple of documentary makers got in touch with me. Of course, my first priority will be to return to France. The intention was to make me feel like I was on his turf, under his control. We needed our little jokes because actually we were a long way out of our depth. "I told him what I knew, that the Russians said that they had an isotope that could act as a trigger for nuclear bombs. According to Sobhraj, he aimed to double-cross both parties and enable the CIA to smash an international drug and arms deal between a terrorist organisation and a crime syndicate. Sobhraj did not settle in his new home and twice stowed away on ships heading to Africa. When he had been in prison in India, women threw themselves at him, and he dropped each one as the next showed her face. Now 76 years old, he is reportedly in poor health while serving a life sentence in Nepal. . Frenchman. We're going to the launder the money through the antiques job. Moreover, when I was released from India, the Indian government had asked Nepal whether I was wanted. She was a little-travelled medical secretary, quiet and emotionally needy. GQ talks to the serial killer who beguiled the delusional and needy and wrecked the lives of almost everyone he knew - and who may be about to be released from Nepalese jail. All of which meant that in 1997 he returned to Paris, where I went to interview him for the Observer. In the interview, Sobhraj spoke about his arrest from a casino in Nepal in 2003, his stint in Delhis Tihar Jail between 1976 and 1997, and the book and movie releases that he was part of then. He was criminal. I too made the journey to Paris and managed to arrange an interview for the Observer with the Vietnamese-Indian Frenchman." The Serpent is on BBC1. The film-maker Farrukh Dhondy got to know Sobhraj in the six-year gap between his lengthy prison sentences, when Sobhraj was involved in arms dealing. 2 April 2021 by Stacey Nguyen. Its a bottomless pit. Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. To avoid that outcome, he escaped from prison and then allowed himself to be caught and sentenced to a term that would bring him up to 20 years - the statute of limitations on his Thai arrest warrant. He escaped from three prisons in three different countries. Despite my pressing, he refused to speak about the murders, only allowing that there were things in his past that he regretted but they were now behind him and he wanted to start life anew. That didn't sound like Sobhraj. He killed them by first drugging their drinks and then stabbing or choking them. "They couldn't help me because I was undercover.". He was indeed released in 1997 after spending two decades in an Indian prison. He yearns for life outside, but once there he soon finds himself back behind bars. Certainly a young French-Canadian nurse named Marie-Andre Leclerc was impressed when she met him travelling in India. You are known to have been in touch with American intelligence agencies even from Kathmandu Jail. Is G20 meet Indias NAM moment with a difference? They typically have a background in crime and they tend to select their victims from a particular social group or demographic. We went around and around the subject, and it became clear that he was more interested in portraying himself as a victim: of western imperialism, a dysfunctional childhood, racism and institutionalisation. (In case those names don't sound familiar, they're renamed Willem and Helena in the series.) He was given a life sentence in 1999 for taking an art teacher hostage in prison. Even bad deeds with good intentions can be good deeds.. After all, I cannot now face trial . He told me that he's been thinking of me recently because he's looking for someone to ghost his autobiography. "She left her husband and came back to Paris when she heard that I was back," he said with proprietorial pride, referring to his return in 1997. Really, as the plane was in Kandahar, the Indian government had no choice but to release Masood to save the passengers. He looked small and inconsequential, but better than any 68-. year-old who's spent the last ten years in a decrepit prison has any right to look. Recently, I filed a petition in the Supreme Court (of Nepal) praying that the court intervene. It proved the last straw for his wife. But he managed to avoid conviction for either of the killings, and instead received a 12-year sentence for the attempted robbery of the students. I asked Biswas how she would feel if she discovered that her husband was indeed a killer. Eventually word got round that he was Charles Sobhraj, so one of my staff asked his name and he said, 'Sob.'" Although he tried to keep me off balance by, for example, driving me to an empty restaurant in the outer suburbs of Paris, he didn't seem scary. The real Charles Sobhraj is still alive and is now serving time in prison after a long time evading punishment, while Marie Andre Leclerc was diagnosed with uterine cancer in 1983 and died the. And he said, 'You could put it that way.'". Great, Click the Allow Button Above The Life and Crimes of Charles Sobhraj: The True Story of the Killer who inspired the hit BBC drama Neville, Richard, Clarke, Buy Charles Sobhraj: Inside the Heart . (Did we really have to shake hands with him? The Midnight Hour: The Serpent (Charles Sobhraj) 133,134 views Feb 4, 2020 200 Dislike Share Save UTD TV 2.37K subscribers This week in the season 2 premiere of The Midnight Hour, your fellow. He claimed he had emails with coded references to red mercury that he could get from Belarus. He held a flamenco dancer hostage in a New Delhi hotel while he used her room to break into a gem store on the floor below. Charles Sobhraj was re-captured on April 6, 1986 drinking beer in a resort bar. They are the only things in his misspent life that hes ever been able to hold on to. Interview de Charles Sobhraj alias "Le serpent" dans "Sept Huit" le tueur raconte tout Purepeople. "Can you recommend one?". You have now crossed 70 years of age. He is obsessed with preventing anyone from exploiting his life for financial gain and threatened to sue the writer. But hed acquired a third wife, an attractive 24-year-old, Nikita Biswas, the daughter of his Nepali lawyer. In Greece he swapped identities with his brother, leaving him to serve an 18-year sentence. A Bollywood film (Main Aur Charles) has been made on you. He had just been released from jail in India, where he had spent 20 years on various charges (but not for any of the murders for which he was alleged to be responsible). The book was published in 1979, after the Frenchman of Vietnamese and Indian parentage had been on trial in India in 1977, when he thought the admission couldn't hurt him. He didnt seem dangerous to me, but then he didnt seem dangerous to those he killed, either. Sobhraj replies, "That's what Time magazine said. So not Nepali handicrafts, after all. 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In 1975, when the Nepal police raided Sobhraj's hastily abandoned hotel room after Bronzich's body was discovered, among the few items they found was a copy of Nietzsche's Beyond Good And Evil. But he hated his adoptive nation. In 1979 Thomas Thompson added an equally disturbing portrait with. 2 weeks ago, The Serpent: Is the 1997 Charles Sobhraj Interview Real? In The Guardian, Observer reporter Andrew Anthony detailed his own experience talking with Sobhraj. Sobhraj made sure he had those connections. But someone leaked to the media my presence in Kathmandu and it hit the front pages. In August 2004, serial killer Charles Sobhraj was convicted to life in prison for the murder of Bronzich on evidence collected by a Dutch diplomat 30 years earlier. On receiving a negative reply from Nepal, the Government of India then informed the CMM (Chief Metropolitan Magistrate) in Delhi that I was no longer wanted by any country and could be released (for) A planned meeting with a Chinese party from Hong Kong, a legal business matter. I didnt commit any offence in Nepal so I didnt apprehend any problems. Death Stalks the Hippy trail! read one headline. The couple married when Sobhraj was released and embarked on an epic crime spree across Europe and Asia, before settling in Mumbai with a newborn child and a profitable trade in stolen cars. Tahar Rahim as Charles Sobhraj in The Serpent. Neville, who is now dead, told me from Australia that his wife was anxious that Sobhraj was at large. There will be film rights too.". 1 day ago, by Yerin Kim Four days after the Himalayan Times ran its story, deputy superintendent Ganesh arrested Sobhraj at the Casino Royale. The only topic that aroused his sense of injustice was his imprisonment, which he took to be one of the great judicial miscarriages of modern times. Soon recognised by a journalist, Sobhraj found himself in the Himalayan Times. On her release in Kabul, she met an American and moved with him and her daughter to the US. "But I was also working for the CIA," he added, as I'm still trying to put the pieces together. Sobhraj prided himself on his ability to read people. After a special plea to the prison minister, two meetings with the prison governor, three body searches and an armed escort, I entered the inner sanctum of the prison, which is run by the prisoners. Boris Johnson, arms dealing, drug trafficking, the Taliban, the Triads, the CIA, the Iraq war and Saddam's secret search for a nuclear bomb: when my phone rang in the lobby of the Shanker Hotel, I knew nothing of these aspects of the story that had brought me to Kathmandu. '", Dhondy turned down the offer, but became convinced that Sobhraj was involved in the illegal arms trade. Sobhraj wanted payment for the interview but I refused and, to my surprise, he agreed to talk. In stressful situations he remains calm and plausible, regardless of what lies he tells. 1 day ago, by Victoria Edel I met Hooda last October and I like him as a person. Whatever life he touches, he wrecks. Ashe once explained to the same brother: "Always remember that their desire to keep me locked up is no match to my will to be free.". Getting to see Sobhraj in Kathmandu was not easy. Charles Sobhraj-1 By Ramesh Koirala. I am going straight back to France to my family. In Afghanistan, he drugged his prison guard and disappeared, leaving his young wife in a cramped and dirty cell in Kabul prison. But the rest was undoubtedly a product of his pathological imagination. He joins the dots and (spoiler alert) presents the information to the Thai police, who arrest Sobhraj but then, through a mixture of incompetence and complacency, allow him to escape. He asked Dhondy to investigate the availability of hot-air balloons. You cant judge him the way you would other normal people. Mention Charles Sobhraj in India, everybody knows, north to south. Referencing the title card, Anthony wrote, "The ABC team were not the only ones back then to speak to Sobhraj, who was suspected of committing at least 12 murders. Sometimes he would complete the murder by setting the body on fire - in more than one case, investigators found that the victim was not dead when he or she was set alight. "I said, 'You're the serial killer.' Everyone has good and bad sides. He told the police that he had come to make a documentary about Nepali handicrafts. President Reagan: 17-23 February 1986 He called me at the Observer after my piece appeared and said he was coming to London. Handicrafts? He was a charismatic figure, fluent in several languages, and finely tuned to what budget travellers wanted. Not subtle, but clearly we were under surveillance. On release, he was due to be extradited to Thailand, where he faced the death penalty for several murders. I asked whether he'd be prepared to discuss the murders in this bestseller. "But it was too hot. But Sobhraj himself remains impenetrable. So will you return to France or spend time as a free man with your family in Nepal? I did, but there has been only silence. I declined the offer but asked him to tell me why hed come to Nepal. "You must talk to him.". The only certainty is that the Serpent will not slip away to a quiet retirement in the French countryside. We spoke for almost two hours, in which Sobhraj jumped back and forth between countries and decades, never showing the slightest regret for the devastation he had wrought or the lives he'd ruined. Now he dreams of retiring to Devon to paint pictures. But presumably that's what his victims thought as well. Having successfully persuaded a killer to acknowledge his guilt on screen in a previous documentary they had made, they were interested in making a film about Sobhraj. Sobhraj described Dhondy as a "petty middleman", while Dhondy called the threat to sue him "extortion and blackmail". In fact, his relationship with Compagnon continued until less than three years ago, when she was threatened on the phone by an angry Nihita Biswas. Sobhraj is escorted by armed policemen to court in Kathmandu, Nepal in 2003. The Serpent takes a close look at the year 1976, when a young Dutch diplomat named Herman Knippenberg followed the murders of Henk Bintanja and Cornelia Hemker in Thailand. '", Dhondy said Compagnon's theory about Sobhraj is that he can't live without prison, the regime, the routine, and the status he enjoys there. Definitely. "I was still in love with Chantal, but I was with my Chinese wife who was pregnant, so I told Chantal, 'I can't be with you.'". You met Pakistani terrorist Masood Azhar while in Tihar Jail. He became a famous outlaw in India. She told me that she didnt believe her husband was a killer, but I asked what she would think if she was presented with irrefutable evidence. I wanted to know what he thought about his past deeds. A couple of months later, Al Faran went silent and until today, the whereabouts of those remaining foreign hostages remain unknown. Jenna Coleman, as Marie-Andre Leclerc, with Rahim in The Serpent. It seemed the more unreliable his behaviour, the more devoted they became. Who's to say what's right and wrong? The Indian Express website has been rated GREEN for its credibility and trustworthiness by Newsguard, a global service that rates news sources for their journalistic standards. An embittered Sobhraj upped the crime stakes. 'He can't deal with the outside world,' says the documentary maker and writer Farrukh Dhondy. Even if the hired killer had been in collusion with Sobhraj, that didn't explain how he entered the prison with a gun - unless someone at the self-same prison authorities turned a blind eye. Yet almost 30 years later Sobhraj returned to Nepal and was arrested, tried and sentenced to 20 years in jail. To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. We sat in a booth, the two men on either side of me. If Sobhraj's greatest criminal weakness was his propensity to be caught, it was offset by an impressive strength: his ability to escape. I wont have any problem with finance. While you might not be able to track down the interview footage, Sobhraj definitely became a media star following his release, reportedly talking to reporters for hefty sums after settling down in Paris. The limited series then dives into a chilling 1997 interview with Sobhraj, who's played by Tahar Rahim. Some years after that I read that he had been visited by a hired assassin in prison, who then attempted to murder one of his fellow inmates in debt to some bigwig on the outside. Upon release after his 12-year sentence, he was to be extradited to Thailand to potentially face the death penalty for several murders. Nepal to release The Serpent serial killer Charles Sobhraj, Onthe Trail of The Serpent: the story behind the true crime classic, TheSerpent: a slow-burn TV success that's more than a killer thriller, TVtonight: Charles Sobhraj's life of crime, 'I saw him as an animal': Tahar Rahim on playing a real-life serial killer. The place was empty but, said Sobhraj, it belonged to a friend. His father was a successful Indian tailor and his mother was his father's mistress, a local Vietnamese woman. How do you want to spend the next few years of your life? Will MS Dhoni pass the baton to Ben Stokes in what could be his final season for CSK? Perhaps it's true. "He can't deal with the outside world," said Dhondy. Young idealists, trusting backpackers and hash-smoking stoners were looking to get lost, and Sobhraj made sure some of them were never found. Please select the topics you're interested in: Would you like to turn on POPSUGAR desktop notifications to get breaking news ASAP? Forever enterprising, the first thing Sobhraj had done after his arrest was sell the rights to his life story to a Bangkok businessman, who sold them on to Random House, who asked Richard to immediately get to Delhi. His first wife was once asked by an Indian journalist how she could have feelings for a killer. When we flew out of Delhi I had never felt so relieved. He talked of making money from his story, whose financial worth he lavishly -overvalued, and he also mentioned ambitions in film. He went on to explain that he had been working as an arms dealer to, among others, the Taliban, courtesy of an introduction from the Islamist terrorist leader Masood Azhar, a friend from his days in Tihar prison. Investigators believe that Sobhraj killed at least a dozen people, including young travellers, whom he would drug and trap in Kanit House in Bangkok. His pattern is to befriend, then drug and rob, or drug and murder, or manipulate and betray' (Biographer Richard Neville). But is the opening interview in the limited series based on actual events? This may be just as well because there is a law in Nepal that says when prisoners reach the age 70 their sentence is cut in half. He called me at my Channel 4 office in Charlotte Street in 1997. On the Trail of the Serpent by Julie Clarke and Richard Neville is published by Vintage. After all, it's not often that renowned multiple killers are at liberty and available to talk. He told me he thought that they were killed because they rejected his criminal entreaties. You can ask for confirmation from Jaswant Singh. Sobhraj met his current Nepalese lawyer, Shakuntala Thapa, through her daughter, 24-year-old Nihita Biswas, who acted as his translator during one of the Frenchman's many appeals. The Taliban needed to sell heroin to buy arms and Sobhraj had contacts with the Triads, who were keen to buy heroin, so he offered to represent the Taliban in a meeting in Nepal. But exactly why he then killed these harmless young travellers remains a mystery. Now you can ask your questions.. 2 weeks ago, by Joely Chilcott He cant deal with the outside world, said Dhondy. But my head was beginning to spin. The first thing he did when I knocked on the door was offer me an open bottle of Coke, which was also the way he had incapacitated many of his victims. He looked a curiously slight figure, his skin remarkably smooth, even youthful, given that hed spent the past two decades in an Indian jail. Published: April 9, 2021 at 2:48 pm. Murderer, 75, who terrorised Asia in 1970s remains behind bars in Nepal. He told Neville that they were involved in drug dealing and he was working for a cartel, but this was nonsense. I dont think he realises what he does. If he did realise, he didnt appear weighed down by the knowledge. Whats not known is that after that call, I had a very long conversation with Jaswant Singh and suggested to him a second solution: that the Government of India gives an official undertaking, endorsed by Parliament, that Masood would be released within six months, and I would try my best to negotiate with Harkat ul Ansar on that ground. A REAL LIFE hero backpacker who escaped a serial killer in BBC drama The Serpent is alive, well - and helping to run his local billiards club. He became known as the Bikini Killer after the swimsuit one of his victims was wearing when she was discovered. Get the daily inside scoop right in your inbox. He was shunted back and forth between his parents and when he was nine, and officially stateless, deposited in a boarding school in France. His first killing had been of a taxi driver in Pakistan several years before, but between October 1975 and March 1976 he is believed to have committed 11 more murders, nearly all of them young backpackers. He eventually made off with thousands of pounds worth of jewels. At first it led to the M25, where Dhondy was directed one morning by Sobhraj. I dont want to say more about it. Upon release after his 12-year sentence, he was to be extradited to Thailand to potentially face the death penalty for several murders. (In case those names don't sound familiar, they're renamed Willem and Helena in the series.) I straightaway refused, saying Masood would never agree, and again, I told them that I was convinced that after 11 days, they would start executing some passengers. Like some bizarre real-life combination of Patricia Highsmith's Tom Ripley and Thomas Harris' Hannibal Lecter, he was handsome, charming and utterly without scruple. In an astonishing interview from his cell in Nepal, Charles Sobhraj says he wants Virgin tycoon Sir Richard Branson and the ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to bankroll a movie. It's debatable whether or not Sobhraj is a psychopath - he certainly doesn't seem constrained by an overdeveloped sense of empathy - but he is clearly not stupid, despite his prison record. Sobhraj turns 70 in April, by which time he will already have served half his sentence, so in theory he will be free once more. "Mention David Beckham in England, everybody knows. There had to be another reason, something vaguely plausible at least. 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