French backpacker missing, believed detained in Egypt for a year, back in Paris

By AP 16 August 2022, 6:34 pm

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Isabel Leclercq, right, the mother of missing traveler Yann Bourdon in Egypt holds a picture of her son during a march with relatives and friends near the Elysee Palace during Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi visiting French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris, Friday, July 22. (AP Photo/Thomas Padilla, File)

A French backpacker who had gone missing in Egypt a year ago has safely returned home to Paris, a lawyer representing his family says.

It’s not clear what happened over the past year to Yann Bourdon, whose family had speculated that he might have been detained by Egyptian security services. The graduate student at the Sorbonne, who vanished while on a year-long backpacking journey, declines to discuss his disappearance with the media and to share details of his return to France.

Sarah Sakouti, a legal counsel for the Geneva-based Committee for Justice that had pressed the Egyptian and French authorities to investigate the 27-year-old’s disappearance, says Bourdon flew from Cairo to Paris on August 10.

A day before, Bourdon had phoned his sister in Paris from the French Consulate in Cairo, Sakouti tells The Associated Press. The same day, Egyptian state security services had announced they would facilitate Bourdon’s return to Paris.