French police make arrest in Swedish murder case

PARIS (Reuters) - French police said on Friday they had arrested a man in connection with the killing of a Swedish teenager who was abducted and murdered in Paris last week.

Police launched a large operation involving about 40 investigators after the charred body of Sussanna Zetterberg, 19, was discovered on Saturday in woods outside Paris just hours after she left a nightclub in the heart of the French capital.

Her hands were tied behind her back and a post-mortem showed she had four bullet holes in her head.

Police said the man, who was arrested in a Parisian suburb, was stopped for questioning when he was apparently seen trying to get rid of suspicious material. They said he had been under surveillance for several days.

They said investigators had turned their attention to the man, aged about 50, because he had recently been stopped for driving a taxi without a license.

Prosecutors are also investigating whether Zetterberg's murder has any links with a case in February when another 19-year-old Swede was raped by a man who had posed as a taxi driver.

The two cases prompted the Swedish embassy to use national press to warn Swedish women not to go out alone in Paris at night.

(Reporting by Thierry Leveque; writing by Swaha Pattanaik; editing by Sami Aboudi)