Extradition order to be made for Ian Bailey

An application may be made as early as Monday for Ian Bailey’s extradition to France, where he would serve 25 years in prison for the 1996 murder of film-producer Sophie Toscan-Du Plantier

In May, a Paris court found Mr Bailey guilty in absentia for the French woman’s murder outside her West Cork home.

Mr Bailey has never been tried for her death in Ireland.

French authorities had asked Ireland to execute a European Arrest Warrant to extradite Mr Bailey in June following the guilty verdict.

Last night, the news broke that a High Court application will now be made for an arrest warrant to extradite the 62-year-old Englishman.

Ireland refused successive French extradition requests, as the Irish director of public prosecutions ruled that there was insufficient evidence to charge Mr Bailey in connection with Ms Du Plantier’s death. However, Mr Bailey has now been convicted of her murder in a French court.

Speaking earlier this week before news of the extradition order broke, Mr Bailey had told the Irish Examiner that he lived in fear of police knocking on his door to bring him to France.

He said at the time: “I’ve got this fear thing. I have to live with the possibility of being extradited. It’s there all the time.

“I am anticipating a third and imminent arrest under a European Arrest Warrant.”

Three previous attempts were made by France to extradite Mr Bailey — in 2010, 2016, and 2019 — but the the State previously made no application to the courts for Mr Bailey’s extradition.

He has not left the country since the first extradition request in 2010 for fear of being arrested.

Ms Du Plantier, a 39-year-old mother-of-one, was killed with “extreme violence”, suffering multiple fractures to her skull, defensive fractures to her hands and lacerations to her brain and body after she was hit with a heavy object, a Paris court heard this year.

It is believed that she died while trying to escape from her attacker after they arrived at her holiday home at a remote part of west Cork.

Investigators found no physical evidence that links Mr Bailey to the crime scene.