2023-10-01 14:11:41
Disappearance of Lina
“Investigators will benefit from reinforced powers”
In France, in the case of the disappearance of 15-year-old Lina, two judges will now jointly lead the investigation, which has moved to charges of “kidnapping or sequestration of more than seven days”.
PublishedOctober 1, 2023, 4:11 p.m.
In France, two investigating judges were jointly seized for “kidnapping or sequestration” in the case of the disappearance, in Bas-Rhin, of Lina, a 15-year-old girl who has not been heard from for more than a week , prosecutors from Saverne and Strasbourg said on Sunday.
The Saverne Public Prosecutor’s Office, until then competent, relinquished responsibility in favor of Strasbourg, which opened a judicial investigation “on counts of kidnapping or sequestration of more than seven days”, according to the Saverne prosecutors, Aline Clérot, and from Strasbourg, Yolande Renzi. The two Strasbourg investigating judges will now direct the investigations, they specified.
“The investigation carried out into the worrying disappearance of Lina did not make it possible to find the young girl, following more than seven days of in-depth investigations,” the two magistrates further wrote. The investigation is still entrusted to the gendarmes of the Strasbourg research section and the Bas-Rhin gendarmerie group.
Possible listening
According to the daily “Dernières Nouvelles d’Alsace”, this change in legal framework “will allow investigators to benefit from reinforced powers”, upon delegation from investigating judges. In particular, they will be able to “set up wiretaps, organize confrontations, summon witnesses or suspects, and place them under assisted witness status or in police custody”.
An uneventful teenager, Lina disappeared on Saturday September 23, late in the morning. She was walking to the Saint-Blaise-la-Roche station, three kilometers from home, a journey she was used to making, to take the train and join her boyfriend in Strasbourg.
Two witnesses say they saw her walking along a road around 11:15 a.m. A few minutes later, his cell phone stopped ringing. Since then, nothing more, despite the wanted notice launched the next day and the intense searches and investigations carried out: citizen searches, bodies of water probed, hearings of witnesses and careful inspection this weekend of a house in Plaine.
(AFP)
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