The Department of Immigration (DoI) has banned Jean Jacques Haye, who was in Nepal´s central jail for almost a year, from coming to Nepal until January 24 of 2019. The 61-year-old French national has been disallowed from obtaining a Nepali visa on three charges. [break]
DoI has banned him five years for allegedly abusing children, three years for using a fake passport and a year for violating previous prohibition.
Haye, who was previously banned from entering Nepal on 13 May in 2002, had come to Kathmandu on August 2 in 2004, three years prior to the expiration of the prohibition period, using a fake passport.
Police had nabbed Haye only on March 13 in 2009, almost five years after he landed in Kathmandu, acting on a tip-off from an NGO. Haye, who placed his photo in the passport of one of his friends to fool immigration officials, had been living with his Nepali wife.
DoI deported Haye on January 29, 2010 to France, where he has been undergoing a trial for allegedly abusing Nepali children sexually, after he paid off a fine of Rs 706,091. DoI had sent him to the central jail on April 8, 2009 following his refusal to pay fine.
“He was adamant not to pay a fine. He always said that he had no money,” a DoI official told myrepublica.com. “But he suddenly got money out of nowhere for this.”
A couple of months after he was jailed, the French government had formally asked the Nepal government to extradite Haye. But the Nepal government had refused to hand over Haye to the French government since there was no extradition treaty between the two countries.
It is learnt that the French embassy in Kathmandu got Haye deported after its attempts of having him extradited failed due to legal hurdles.
“We did not pay fine on behalf of Haye. We just facilitated his deportation,” a French embassy source told myrepublica.com. “Haye will now be produced in the French court for his yet-to-be-decided case.”
Haye was released on a conditional bail by the French court in 2004. He was ordered to regularly appear in the court once a week. But he fled France and came back to Nepal via Turkey in 2004 in order to evade his case.
Haye, who fluently speaks Nepali language, had told immigration officials during interrogation that he was compelled by his love for his wife to illegally enter Nepal. But immigration officials say that he came to Nepal as he was well aware of all loopholes in Nepali laws. “He perfectly knows how to skip legal actions in Nepal,” a DoI official said.
Haye, who was arrested first in 1999 on the basis of a complaint filed by one of the street kids sheltered in his children home, had succeeded in escaping a case of child sex abuse.
At that time, too, he was deported to France with a five year ban from entering Nepal on the charge of overstaying his visa. After failing to prove charges against Haye, rights activists had lodged a case against him in France.
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