Briton says innocent of Frenchwoman’s Ireland murder

DUBLIN: A British man convicted in his absence in Paris of the 1996 killing of a French woman in Ireland repeated Saturday that he was innocent. Ian Bailey was given a 25-year prison sentence on Friday for beating to death Sophie Toscan du Plantier, the wife of a prominent French film producer, at her holiday home in County Cork. The judges issued a new arrest warrant in a bid to put the 62-year-old former freelance journalist in jail. Speaking to the RTE broadcaster in Skibbereen in County Cork, where he has a market stall, Bailey said the result was “water off a duck´s back”. Asked if he was waiting to be arrested, he said: “It´s a bank holiday on Monday, maybe on Tuesday I might be waiting for a knock on my door.” He asked “for somebody in Ireland to come out and have the courage to tell the truth, and to admit they know that it wasn´t me”. “I know they are sitting on that, and my prayer has been that the truth will come out,” he said. He expressed “all sympathy” for the victim´s family, saying: “They were told a bundle of lies right from the beginning.” Bailey has always proclaimed his innocence and refused to appear at the French trial.