Macron blasts 'unacceptable' lapses over girl's suspected murder

PUYCASQUIER, France — French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday condemned "unacceptable" lapses within the judicial system over an 11-year-old girl's killing, after it emerged that the main suspect was previously accused of sexually abusing children.

A girl, named in the press only as Lyhanna, went missing on May 29 near the southwestern town of Fleurance after she was last seen getting into a man's car.

After days of combing the countryside, investigators found the body of a child wearing the same clothes as her in an abandoned silo in the nearby village of Puycasquier on Thursday.

Formal identification is under way.

A 41-year-old father of two, whose daughter was a school friend of Lyhanna, has been detained as the key suspect.

It emerged that he had twice been formally accused of raping a child, but the investigations had either been dropped or stalled. "It is clear that there has been a dysfunction," Macron said in Montenegro, where he was attending a European summit. "It's unacceptable." Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu told his justice, interior and budget ministers at an emergenc