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English fan charged with murder
Posted: Saturday July 04, 1998 09:54 AM
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Birch (left) was taken to prison in Saint-Quentin-Fallavier (AP) |
GRENOBLE, France
(Reuters)-- An English soccer fan was charged with murder and remanded in
custody on Saturday after confessing to stabbing a Frenchman to death
because he mistook him for an Argentine World Cup supporter, police
said.
An investigating judge ordered Londoner Paul Birch, 43, to be formally
investigated for murder -- the French legal equivalent of being charged and
a first step towards possible trial.
Birch was taken to prison in Saint-Quentin-Fallavier, near the Alpine city
of Grenoble, in the early hours of Saturday after being questioned by the
judge for 10 hours.
Police said Birch, who described himself as an England soccer
fan, had admitted fatally stabbing Eric Franschet, a 33-year-old French
engineer from Grenoble, on a train between Grenoble and Lyon.
The two men were seated in the same compartment following England's World
Cup defeat by Argentina on
Tuesday . Birch said Franschet smiled at him and he believed he was making
fun of him.
Birch jumped off the train at the next stop and fled across the fields. He
was arrested after getting into a fight with the night watchman at a
Grenoble hotel where he was staying.
Copyright 2003 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
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