Ian Bailey, convicted in absentia for 1996 French film producer's murder, dies

DUBLIN (Reuters) - British journalist Ian Bailey, the chief suspect in the 1996 murder of a French film producer in Ireland, died in the Irish county of Cork on Sunday of a suspected heart attack, his solicitor said.

Bailey was sentenced in absentia to 25 years in jail by a French court in 2019 for the murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier, whose battered body was found while she was on holiday in the Irish coastal village of Schull in December 1996.

He always denied the crime, and Irish authorities never prosecuted him. The Irish courts in 2020 blocked for a third time his extradition to France, where the law allows suspects to be tried for murdering French citizens abroad.

(Reporting by Padraic Halpin)