French police leave South Korea with baby corpses

SEOUL, Feb 22 (Reuters) French investigators left for home from South Korea today with the corpses of two babies suspected to have been killed and put in a freezer by their expatriate French mother, a police source said.

French police last year took Veronique Courjault into custody on suspicion of killing two of her infant children and storing their corpses in a freezer in the family's Seoul apartment. She likely faces trial in France.

''There will be an autopsy performed in France,'' the source familiar with the case said.

The investigators, French police and a court official, arrived on February 12 to investigate the scene and question witnesses in cooperation with local police, a South Korean police spokesman said separately.

The case first came to light in July 2006 when Courjault's husband Jean-Louis contacted South Korean police to say he had discovered the corpses after returning from an overseas business trip.

The wife was out of South Korea at the time and the husband left the country shortly after calling the police. He is currently in France under police supervision.

DNA testing in South Korea and France has determined the two are the parents of the babies, authorities in both countries have said.

REUTERS SY VC0945