Sid Ahmed Rezala was never tried. He was a young man, reported by TIME in January 2000 to be 20 years old and an Algerian-born Frenchman, whom French authorities sought in connection with three deaths of women in 1999. Two of the deaths happened on night trains, and the third in Amiens. He was arrested in Portugal in January 2000, resisted being sent to France, and died in a Portuguese prison before the extradition question was finally settled. Everything written about the three deaths in connection with him is therefore attributed: it records what French judges sought him for, what the justice minister said in Parliament, and what the press reported.
TIME's "World Watch" column of January 24, 2000, named him as the prime suspect in the deaths of three women in France.
Isabel Peake died on October 13, 1999, on a high-speed night train. Moustique, the Belgian weekly, places the journey on the Paris to Limoges line. She was British. The magazine described the case as having no apparent motive: "Le mobile? A priori aucun."
Corinne Caillaux died in December 1999 on another night train, on the Calais to Ventimiglia line, according to Moustique. TIME wrote that he was wanted in connection with her killing.
Emilie Bazin is the third woman. TIME reported that he was suspected of murdering her in Amiens. The reports give no month or year for her death. Her name appears in a question put to the Minister of Justice in the National Assembly in May 2000, alongside those of Isabel Peake and Corinne Caillaux.
These three women are the only deaths attributed to him. Their families have not been named, and little has been published about the women beyond their names and the places where the cases arose.
The most reliable statement of what French authorities held against him comes from Elisabeth Guigou, then keeper of the seals and Minister of Justice. Answering a question in the National Assembly on May 9, 2000, she said that on January 14, 2000 France had asked Portugal to hand him over on the basis of three arrest warrants (mandats d'arrêt) issued by the investigating judges of Amiens, Chateauroux and Dijon for voluntary homicide (homicides volontaires). A second written answer, published on May 22, 2000, gave the same account: three extradition requests, resting on three warrants from the same three courts, covering three voluntary homicides, each punishable in France by a maximum of 30 years of criminal reclusion.
Neither answer says that he had been charged by a mise en examen, and none is reported. The phrase that applies is the one the minister used: he was the subject of arrest warrants for three voluntary homicides. The answers do not say which judge sought him for which death.
The minister's answers also record that the warrants were circulated the day after the judges took the cases, as a precaution, and that rumors that he might be freed were "totally unfounded" in her words.
A deputy, Rudy Salles, told the Assembly that Rezala had been arrested at Pontarlier on November 13, 1999, then released, and was later arrested in Portugal. The minister's reply did not take up this account, which therefore remains a deputy's statement. A 2024 retrospective in Viral Mag, a French general-interest website, adds that a local police unit in Dijon had first been given the Caillaux case and that he slipped away in Spain despite the French international arrest warrant; no other account confirms these details.
TIME reported in January 2000 that he had been arrested in Barreiro, about 20 kilometers south of Lisbon, after eluding a manhunt that began in October 1999. Viral Mag gives the date of the arrest as January 11, 2000. One of the deputies who later wrote to the minister placed the arrest at Lisbon; the TIME report is the more specific. Moustique, in a program preview published on July 23, 2025, ahead of a Belgian television retelling of the case, noted that police had identified him, tracked him in France and elsewhere and then arrested him in Portugal.
At the time of the arrest, TIME wrote, he refused voluntary extradition to France, and the paper said he could remain in custody in Portugal for months while the case was investigated.
The extradition request of January 14, 2000 ran into the Portuguese constitution. The ministry's May 22 answer explained that Portugal forbids life imprisonment and, by the reservation it entered on February 12, 1990 to the European Convention on Extradition, will not extradite a person for an offense punishable by a perpetual sentence. French authorities argued that the three proceedings could not lead to three successive 30-year sentences, citing article 132-4 of the French Penal Code, and that a change of the legal classification of the facts during the investigation would be limited by article 14.3 of the extradition convention. The 30-year maximum for voluntary homicide met the Portuguese limit, the minister said.
On March 9, 2000 the Portuguese court at Lisbon gave a favorable opinion on the French requests. His lawyers appealed at once, and the Supreme Court of Justice of Portugal was to decide. A deputy writing on June 12, 2000 stated that the Supreme Court had upheld the extradition, though he judged that the affair exposed a delay in building a European judicial area. The ruling itself was not reported in detail, and its date is not given.
The case reached the Assembly three times in a few weeks. On February 28, 2000 Roland Blum asked what the minister would do about Portugal's refusal in principle to extradite where a life sentence could apply. On May 1, 2000 Christian Kert asked how long it would take before Rezala answered to French justice, more than four months after an arrest that had been announced as quickly leading to extradition, and argued that the defense was invoking the Portuguese constitution to delay matters. On May 9 Rudy Salles put an oral question, criticizing the French request and calling for a European judicial area with near-automatic extradition within the Union. Elisabeth Guigou answered that the 1957 European Convention governed and that the judicial authorities were independent, and that further government intervention was neither appropriate nor useful.
On June 12, 2000 the deputy Gilbert Le Bris wrote that he found the case hard to accept humanly but legally well founded under the extradition rules and used it to ask that the French presidency of the European Union harmonize national criminal law. The reply, published on July 9, 2001, did not name Rezala. It said the difficulty had come from Portugal's reservation to article 1 of the European Convention and listed the 1995 and 1996 European Union conventions on extradition, the Tampere conclusions of October 1999 and the measures adopted at the Justice and Home Affairs Council of November 30 and December 1, 2000.
A French online retrospective reports that on June 28, 2000, while held in a Portuguese prison, he died, and it describes the death as suicide. The same piece says that shortly before his death he gave a prison interview in which he described fragmentary recollections of the killings. The date and the interview rest on that one account and are reported, not established.
How the French proceedings were formally closed after his death, whether by an order declaring the public action extinguished or otherwise, has not been reported. No trial was held in France or Portugal. No French court made a finding of guilt.
Never tried: all three deaths. The record shows warrants and extradition requests, nothing more. TIME wrote that he was the prime suspect; one of its sentences describes the Amiens death as a murder he is suspected of, not one proved.
Unreported: no confession is known. No further death is known to have been attributed to him by the authorities; Viral Mag mentions doubts about other unsolved cases, without naming any.
Details that vary: the date of the Caillaux death (December 13 or 14, 1999); where he was arrested (Barreiro in TIME, Lisbon in a deputy's question); the spelling of Isabel or Isabelle Peake; and the date of the Supreme Court ruling, which has not been reported. Moustique's photo caption gives a date of October 13, 2000 for the Peake case, which is the wrong year.
October 13, 1999: Isabel Peake dies on a night train on the Paris to Limoges line.
November 13, 1999: a deputy later says Rezala was arrested at Pontarlier and released.
December 1999: Corinne Caillaux dies on a night train on the Calais to Ventimiglia line.
1999: Emilie Bazin dies in Amiens; the month is not reported.
January 2000: Rezala arrested in Barreiro, Portugal (January 11 per one retrospective).
January 14, 2000: France asks Portugal to hand him over on three warrants from judges at Amiens, Chateauroux and Dijon.
January 24, 2000: TIME names him prime suspect in three deaths.
February 28, 2000: first written question on the extradition in the National Assembly.
March 9, 2000: Lisbon court gives a favorable opinion on extradition; defense appeals.
May 1 and May 9, 2000: further questions; the Minister of Justice answers in the Assembly.
June 12, 2000: a deputy writes that the Portuguese Supreme Court has upheld the extradition.
June 28, 2000: he dies in prison in Portugal, reported as suicide.
July 9, 2001: government answer on European extradition reform.