PARIS (Reuters) – French police are investigating the murder of a 12-year-old girl whose body was found last week near her home in eastern Paris and a young suspect has been detained, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said on Tuesday.
The suspect was a woman under 20 who had been staying in France illegally, he said.
“The suspect … is not already known to the police. She is under 20 years of age. She regularly came over on to our national territory as a student. About a month ago, she was told to leave our national territory,” Darmanin told RTL radio.
He did not give further details. Newspapers, citing police and judicial sources, said the suspect was Algerian.
The Paris prosecutor’s department said the girl’s body was discovered late on Friday near her home in the 19th Arrondissement.
Lawyer Alexandre Silva, representing the suspect, told BFM TV that he could not comment on the case.
(Reporting by Thomas Denis and Benoit Van Overstraeten; Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta and Nick Macfie)
