French justice officials said that a Spanish man detained by Miami police was wanted for questioning in France in connection with the killing of British schoolgirl Ms Caroline Dickinson five years ago.
This followed new French tests on a DNA sample from Francisco Mr Javier Arce Montez, a Spanish man detained by Florida police last month after an alleged break-in and lewd behaviour in a woman's apartment in Florida.
Mr Yves Boivin, a French state prosecutor, said genetic tests carried out in France on DNA samples from Mr Arce, brought back from Miami by two French detectives, provided "sufficient grounds for requesting that this person be returned to French soil".
French officials have been hunting for years for the murderer of Ms Dickinson, who was raped and suffocated in a youth hostel in the French village of Pleine-Fougeres in the north-eastern Brittany area while on a school trip in 1996. She was aged 13.
"The tests which have just been carried out reveal significant similarities with the prints registered in Pleine Fougeres," Mr Boiven told a late night news conference after the French tests on DNA samples provided by the Miami police.