Suspect in fatal Amsterdam stabbing arrested in France

A 24-year-old Moroccan man was arrested in the south of France on suspicion of stabbing a 44-year-old man to death on C.J.K. van Aaltstraat in Amsterdam in September. The man will be extradited to the Netherlands this week, Het Parool reports.

The victim was stabbed to death in his apartment on September 1st. Family members found his lifeless body at around 4:30 p.m. when they returned from vacation. The man had stayed home to renovate the apartment while his family was away. The motive for his murder is not yet known.

The Dutch and French police tracked down Amza G. thanks to a bloody T-shirt, fingerprints and his cell phone, according to the newspaper. Multiple witnesses stated that G. worked as handyman in the victim's apartment and disappeared after the murder. A bloody T-shirt belonging to G. was found near the crime scene. The man appeared in police files in multiple European countries under different identities, but could be identified by means of his fingerprints. And the Dutch police managed to trace G.'s cellphone to the south of France, Het Parool writes.

G. denies any involvement in the murder. "I only worked as a painter in the building where the crime took place", he said in a court in Montpellier, during a hearing on the Dutch arrest warrant issued against him, late last week, according to the newspaper. The French judge ruled that nothing stands in the way of G. being extradited to the Netherlands, and he will be handed over to the Dutch authorities during the course of the week.