It is one of Ireland’s most high-profile unsolved crimes. Almost thirty years after the events, has the Irish state failed in the murder of French woman Sophie Toscan du Plantier? The main suspect, Ian Bailey, should have been tried by an Irish jury “, the country’s foreign minister said Thursday evening.
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With our correspondent in Dublin, Clemence Penard
” The Irish justice system failed Sophie ” said Micheál Martin, the Irish Tánaiste, the name given to the second most important figure in Ireland, after the Prime Minister, in very strong words.
At the launch of a new book on Thursday evening Sophie, the final verdict – the seventh writing on this unsolved case – Micheál Martin asked why the evidence against the main suspect was never presented to a jury in the country.
” We failed »
In 1996, Sophie Toscan du Plantier was found beaten to death outside her holiday home in west Cork. This year, in January 2024, Ian Bailey died of a heart attack at the age of 66, without ever having been charged, in Ireland. However, the Englishman had been sentenced in absentia in France to 25 years in prisonbut the Irish courts have consistently refused to extradite him.
” We failed in our duty to find and convict a bloodthirsty murderer ” said Micheál Martin, who today does not rule out the need for a public inquiry, while a police investigation is still ongoing. Comments that have led Sophie’s family to immediately call for a public inquiry into her death.
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