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You are here: Home News French News French cops fail to find missing prostitutes

20/11/2008French cops fail to find missing prostitutes

Police launched a first search for the three women who are believed to be kidnapped by a convicted armed robber, but no to avail.

20 November 2008

SAINT-JULIEN-LE-MONTAGNIER – French police with sniffer dogs scoured land in the wooded hills of Provence on Wednesday, hunting for clues to the fate of three missing prostitutes.

Officers took Patrick Salameh, 51, a convicted armed robber now detained in relation to the disappearance of two women - a Ukrainian and an Algerian - and suspected of kidnapping a third Romanian woman.

An initial search of a rocky hillside outside the village of Saint Julien le Montagnier, on a hill 40 kilometres northeast of Marseille, turned up nothing, but investigators vowed to continue.

"All morning operations were carried out on land belonging to the suspect's family," said Marseille prosecutor Jacques Dallest, who took part in the search along with investigating magistrates. "Nothing was found."

In parallel to the hunt, police forensic scientists tested DNA traces found in Salameh's apartment in Marseille, along with personal effects belonging to two of the missing women.

According to the newspaper Nice-Matin, police also found a truncheon, a knife and surgical gloves in the flat.

"Now, the inquiry is going to expand to take in all the areas frequented by the suspect. More searches will be carried out," Dallest said.

"The search area is large; the Canal de Provence, country estates, woods, houses, everywhere that could shelter a kidnapped person or where bodies could be dumped or buried," he said.

Police announced on Saturday that they had launched a hunt for the missing prostitutes.
Salameh was arrested in Marseille, a major port on the Mediterranean, last week after a 24-year-old Moroccan prostitute told police she had been beaten and raped by him for more than six hours in late September.

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