Bailey: I may defend myself by video-link in French trial

FORMER journalist Ian Bailey is prepared to ‘consider’ giving evidence via video-link in his forthcoming murder trial in France, he has told the Irish Daily Mail.

Mr Bailey said he would consider this ‘after first taking legal advice on the matter’, adding: ‘It would be in the interest of defending myself.’

The West Cork-based Englishman has just lost a Supreme Court bid in France challenging his charge of the murder of filmmaker Sophie Toscan du Plantier. This paves the way for the French authorities to put Mr Bailey on trial in his absence.

Mr Bailey yesterday criticised the judicial decision and forthcoming potential trial as an attempt to ‘frame’ him. He confirmed he is now taking his case to the European Court of Human Rights in an attempt to halt the trial in France.

The 61-year-old said he is ‘disappointed’ that a ‘prosecution file rejected by the Irish authority could make muster in France’. He said he believes that, if convicted, the French would then try to extradite him.

Mother-of-one Ms Toscan du Plantier’s badly beaten body was found outside her holiday home near Toormore, outside Schull, Co. Cork, on the morning of December 23, 1996.

Nobody has ever been charged in Ireland in connection with the death of the 39-year-old French filmmaker. Mr Bailey has always denied any involvement in her murder.