Besançon (France) (AFP) - A Chilean man appeared in court in France Tuesday accused of the murder of his Japanese ex-girlfriend, Narumi Kurosaki, who disappeared in 2016 in a high-profile case that has gripped three continents.
Nicolas Zepeda, who denies killing Kurosaki, was extradited from his country to France in 2020.
Kurosaki, a brilliant scholarship student then aged 21, arrived in eastern French city Besancon in summer 2016 to learn the language.She disappeared on December 4.
Her former boyfriend Zepeda, whom she had broken up with a year before, was the last person to see her alive.
Prosecutors allege that Zepeda was unable to deal with the couple's breakup, coming to Besancon to kill Kurosaki in her student dorm room before dumping the body in the forests of the rugged Jura region.
But so far no trace has been found of Kurosaki's body.
"Her parents know after five years that their daughter couldn't have vanished or committed suicide...they have no doubt that Mr Zepeda killed her," the family's lawyer Sylvie Galley said.
After travelling from Tokyo to attend the trial, Kurosaki's mother and younger sister could be seen holding back sobs on the plaintiffs' bench and avoided looking at the accused.
'Screams of terror'
Wearing a blue shirt and dark tie, Zepeda spoke with his lawyers at the Besancon courtroom before confirming his name and date of birth to the judges.
Speaking in Spanish via an interpreter, he described himself as the "founder of a small business".
Lead judge Matthieu Husson said that the case "stood out by its international nature", with some witnesses set to appear by video call from Japan and Chile, and the whole trial interpreted into both Japanese and Spanish.
Now aged 31, Zepeda has been in custody in Besancon since his extradition, which French judges had to fight hard to secure.
He denies any link to the disappearance of Kurosaki, whom he met at Japan's Tsukuba university in 2014.
He has been held in solitary confinement because of the case's high profile.
Zepeda's lawyer Jacqueline Laffont said that her client was "almost relieved to finally be able to explain himself, to be heard".
The Chilean has admitted spending the night with Kurosaki in December, claiming he ran into her by chance while travelling through France.
But several witnesses reported hearing "screams of terror" and thuds "as if someone was striking" -- although none called the police at the time.
Some of Kurosaki's friends received strange messages in the following days from her social networking accounts, which police believe were sent by Zepeda.
It was more than a week later, on December 13, that a university administrator reported her missing.
The suspect had already left for Chile after spending several days with a cousin in Spain.
Prime suspect
No sign of blood or a struggle was found in Kurosaki's student room, and all her belongings were still there apart from a suitcase and a blanket.
Zepeda turned himself in to Chilean police and said that Kurosaki had been alive when he left her after spending the night together.
He quickly became the prime suspect after he was found to have gone out of his way via a forest, and to have bought matches and a container of flammable liquid.
His father Humberto Zepeda, also present for the trial alongside the accused's mother, told French weekly JDD in February that the charges were "a biased accusation with no scientific proof...based on suspicions and conjecture".
But prosecutor Etienne Manteaux said last year that there was "a huge amount of technical data" relating to the case, including phone records, the locations of Zepeda's vehicle and his debit card records.
Prosecutors have also trailed "witness testimony from people close to him that disprove Mr Zepeda's version of events".
