A French fugitive hidden in New York extradited from the United States

Condemned in absentia to life in France, he had managed to join the United States under a false identity.

A French national sentenced in 2002 for kidnapping and attempted murder was extradited from the United States where he lived under a false identity, the US immigration police said Thursday.

Samba Ndiaye, 42, was arrested in May in New York after information provided by the French police established that he was identified in the United States as Mohamed Fall, a Mauritanian national. Under his real name, he was sentenced in absentia in France to life in December 2002 for kidnapping, kidnapping accompanied by torture and attempted murder on another man five years earlier in Marseille, the migration police said in a statement.

Two identities, one and the same person

After having managed to enter the United States "at an unknown date and place", he was arrested in June 2005. Affirming then Mohamed Fall, he was placed under lock and then released on bail pending his order. of expulsion, issued at the end of July 2008 but which had not been applied. In 2012, he was sentenced to eight months in prison in Ohio (center) for violence against police officers. At the end of his sentence, he had been transferred to the migration police, who had finally released him "while waiting for him to find travel documents" for Mauritania.

But last April, a French policeman seconded to the French Consulate in New York told his American colleagues that he thought Samba Ndiaye and Mohamed Fall were one and the same person.

Fingerprints and photographs confirmed his suspicions and the fugitive was finally arrested on May 21 in Manhattan. He was brought back to France on Tuesday by a special flight and handed over to the French authorities, the police said.