A CHILEAN man goes on trial in France today, accused of the murder of his Japanese ex-girlfriend, Narumi Kurosaki, who disappeared in 2016 in a high-profile case that gripped three continents.

Nicolas Zepeda, who denies killing Kurosaki, sees his trial go ahead after he was extradited from his country to France in 2020.

Kurosaki, a brilliant scholarship student then aged 21, arrived in Besancon, France, in summer 2016, to learn the language. She disappeared on December 4.

Zepeda, whom she had broken up with a year before, was the last person to see her alive.

Prosecutors alleged that the man was unable to deal with the break-up, coming to Besancon to kill Kurosaki in her student dorm room before dumping the body in the forests of the rugged Jura region.

But, so far, no trace has been found of her body.

“Her parents know that after five years, their daughter could not have vanished or committed suicide… they have no doubt that Zepeda killed her,” said the family’s lawyer Sylvie Galley.

Kurosaki’s mother and younger sister will travel from Tokyo to attend the trial.

‘Screams of terror’

Zepeda, now 31, has been in custody in Besancon since his extradition from Chile, which French judges had to fight hard to secure.

He has denied any link to the disappearance of Kurosaki, whom he met at Tsukuba University in Japan in 2014.

He has been held in solitary confinement because of the case’s high profile.

His lawyer Jacqueline Laffont said her client is “almost relieved to finally be able to explain himself, to be heard; he is coming in determined”.

The Chilean admitted spending the night with Kurosaki in December, who he claimed he ran into by chance while travelling through France.

But several witnesses reported hearing “screams of terror” and thuds “as if someone was striking” – although none called police at the time.

Some of Kurosaki’s friends received strange messages in the following days from her social networking accounts, which police believe were sent by Zepeda.

On December 13, more than a week later, a university administrator reported her missing.

The suspect had already left for Chile by then, after spending several days with a cousin in Spain.

‘Tricky case’

No sign of blood or a struggle was found in Kurosaki’s student room, and all her belongings were still there apart from a suitcase and a blanket.

Zepeda turned himself in to Chilean police and said Kurosaki had been alive when he left her after spending the night together.

He quickly became the prime suspect after he was found to have gone out of his way via a forest, and to have bought matches and a container of flammable liquid.

His father, Humberto Zepeda, told French weekly JDD in February that the charges are “a biased accusation with no scientific proof… based on suspicions and conjecture”.

But prosecutor Etienne Manteaux said last year that there is “a huge amount of technical data” relating to the case, including phone records, the locations of Zepeda’s vehicle and his debit card records.

Prosecutors also trailed “witness testimony from people close to him that disprove Zepeda’s version of events” claiming a chance encounter that ended with the former couple in bed.

“It is a tricky case, like any criminal case where there is no body,” said Randall Schwerdorffer, a lawyer for Kurosaki’s new boyfriend at the time of her disappearance, who is a joint plaintiff in the case. – AFP, March 29, 2022.