“It is up to us to develop our legal arsenal to protect the French,” declared the Minister of the Interior, Bruno Retailleau.

The new resident of Place Beauvau and executive of the Les Républicains party reacted on the social network X to the death of the 19-year-old student, whose body was found in the Bois de Boulogne, near Paris, on Saturday. A suspect was arrested on Tuesday in Switzerland.

“This crime is abominable and one can only be revolted by this stolen life.” The new Minister of the Interior, Bruno Retailleau, reacted on Wednesday, September 25, to the murder of Philippine, a 19-year-old student whose body was found buried in the Bois de Boulogne on Saturday. “Following the arrest of the alleged perpetrator of Philippine’s murder, I would like to express my support and my heartfelt thoughts to the family of this young girl.”wrote the Republican senator on the social network X, the day after the arrest of a suspect in Switzerland.

“It is up to us, public officials, to refuse to accept this inevitability and to develop our legal arsenal to protect the French people,” continues Bruno Retailleau, while according to the first information released on the suspect arrested, he is a Moroccan convicted in 2021 for rape and subject to an obligation to leave French territory (OQTF).

“Together with the Minister of Justice, within the scope of our respective responsibilities, and under the authority of the Prime Minister, we must work to ensure the safety of our compatriots”insists the Minister of the Interior. On Monday, he went into the toes of his colleague in the Chancellery, Didier Migaud, by calling for “to change a criminal policy which, for a very long time, has allowed this right to non-execution of sentences to take hold”.

Other political leaders, from both the right and the left, questioned, on Wednesday morning, “the criminal and administrative chain” in the Philippine murder case. “That’s the problem with OQTFs, it has to happen quickly”François Hollande stressed on franceinfo. On France Inter, the LR president of the Senate, Gérard Larcher, also questioned the functioning of the penal chain, estimating that “It’s one of the emergencies” to be processed.