Sobhraj, Or How to Be Friends With a Serial Killer
2004
A portrait of the notorious alleged serial killer. Charles Sobhraj lived in Paris as a free man, with a French passport, with two wives and two daughters when on September 22, 2003, he was arrested in Katmandu, Nepal, by police who charge him with two murders committed twenty six years previously. He has been variously labelled as the most evil man of the 20th century, a serial killer, a modern Don Juan who uses women to achieve his goals, an escape artist able to break out of a dozen maximum security jails, an existential animal without morality.
Often targetting young backpackers on the Thailand and India hippy trail in the 1970s Sobhraj is believed to have committed numerous murders, for which is has not been tried. When he was eventually captured in India in the 70s, Sobhraj avoided trial and execution in Thailand by contriving to have himself jailed for twenty years in India
In Tihar jail, Delhi, he became its don and won the friendship of Islamic terrorist leaders who were his jail mates. On his release he was given French nationality as part of a bargain between Indian and French governments. Eventually living in Paris, he turned to arms dealing and through his jail acquaintances began supplying arms to the Taliban and other jehadi groups based in Pakistan. He even boasts of his brokerage of a possible nuclear deal with Iraq. Told through the eyes of his victims, the former diplomat who has spent 30 years on his case, the police who chased him, the women who loved him, his confidants and friends, and last but not least Charles Sobhraj himself.