TALKS TO FROM NEPAL CELL
Sobhraj told us he also wanted to discuss flogging the rights to his life story to Mackenzie, 50, who has vowed to give away half her £50billion wealth after divorcing Amazon boss Bezos.
Yet there is no suggestion that either she or Branson want to be involved with the fiend.
Offering to give a tell-all interview, he bafflingly demands Branson, 70, send a “senior lawyer” immediately to discuss the terms of his movie deal.
He also claims he will be freed in two weeks after a Supreme Court ruling – though the truth is he is likely to remain locked up until 2024.
Sobhraj says his 2004 trial in Nepal was illegal and clutches at the findings of a report by the United Nations Human Rights Committee.
He says: “Look, look, about the guilt, I’m innocent. On July 27 2010, 12 members of the UNHRC gave a judgment in which they declared my two cases in Nepal were illegal. I’m not guilty. Also, after the 12 members of the UNHRC declared about the trial, they should release me within 90 days, but they didn’t. And afterwards we asked for compensation of seven million euros from Nepal. I’m absolutely innocent in those cases.”
In fact the human rights agency has said it neither acquitted him nor called for his release.
It did, however, say there had been “specific concerns about the conduct of his trial and his conditions of detention”. Sobhraj, who has access to newspapers and international TV
SLIPPERY Guards flank killer at hearing in Nepal, 2014 channels in jail, has been linked with as many as two dozen murders across Nepal, India, Malaysia and Thailand.
His first jail sentence was for burglary in Paris in 1963. On release, he flirted with Parisian high society while amassing wealth through burglaries, car thefts and scams. He eventually had to flee and was on the run for years using stolen passports.
During the 1970s and 1980s he used his knowledge of gems and of the
NOTORIETY In Paris after 1997 release backpacker routes to lure unsuspecting Westerners into his circle.
Those who resisted his moneymaking scams were poisoned. Some victims found in just swimwear were declared victims of the “Bikini Killer”.
In time, slippery Sobhraj became known as The Serpent.
He killed American backpacker Connie Jo Bronzich, 29, and Canadian tourist Laurent Carrière, 26, in Nepal in 1975. He would evade justice in Thailand for almost 30 years.
But authorities in India nailed him in 1976. Along with Leclerc, he was snared in Delhi and jailed for the attempted robbery of a group of French students.
Leclerc was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and allowed to return home to Canada, where she died in 1984, at 38.
Sobhraj, meanwhile, remained in jail in India. But he was still under a 20-year arrest warrant in Thailand, where he was likely to face the death penalty for the 1975 murders.
In 1986, two years before he was due for release in India, Sobhraj staged a party for guards, drugged them and escaped. He was caught and, as he hoped, his sentence was extended by a decade. So the Thai arrest warrant expired while he was still inside – and he was never extradited for murder.
In 1997, Sobhraj, then 52, walked free and returned to Paris for a comfortable life, cashing in on his infamy – and even posing with a newspaper headlined on his release.
There was talk of a Hollywood biopic and reports of him charging “fans” $5,000 to lunch with him. Then, inexplicably, he flew to Nepal. What drove Sobhraj to return to the scene of his crime in 2004 has always remained a mystery. Some claim it was fuelled by arrogance and his constant need for attention.
But the liar says he was working as an arms dealer for the Taliban in Pakistan and passing information to America’s Central Intelligence Agency.
Sobhraj said: “At that time I was doing something with the Americans in Pakistan for the CIA.”