AFP Videos – France
Mazan rape trial: how investigators identified Gisèle P.’s attackers
Analysis of telephone bills, facial recognition software: the commissioner in charge of the Mazan rape case detailed on Wednesday the long and tedious work of investigators to find the attackers of Gisèle P., abused by dozens of strangers recruited by her husband on the internet. After having recorded some 200 rapes on the victim, between July 2011 and October 2020, most of them by her husband himself, the investigators finally drew up a list of 72 individuals remaining to be identified, explained before the criminal court of Vaucluse the divisional commissioner Jérémie Bosse Platière, now director of the interdepartmental police (DIPN) of the Hautes-Alpes. Given the scale of the number of people suspected, the police will have to spread their arrests into five waves, between the end of 2020 and September 2021. At that time, 50 men were formally identified, in addition to the husband. These 50 men aged 26 to 74 have been on trial since Monday and until December 20, in Avignon, alongside Dominique P., 71. All risk up to 20 years of criminal imprisonment. The work of the judicial police was greatly facilitated by the thousands of photos and videos taken by the husband, recorded on a hard drive then meticulously described and classified in an “abuse” file. With a sub-file for each man who came to rape his wife. “A list will then be drawn up for each individual according to the name of the file,” the commissioner explains. Objective: to identify “Chris the firefighter”, “Quentin”, “Gaston” or “David the Black”. At the same time, the police are using the numerous traces left by the countless telephone exchanges and online conversations between the husband and his wife’s attackers. “We will start with the telephone numbers (on Dominique P.’s telephone bills) and look at each date to see if there is a link between the call made and the facts found” on the images found, indicates Mr. Bosse Platière. Dominique P. had also blocked numerous contacts on his telephones, arousing the suspicions of the investigators. “It’s unusual, we see that a large number of contacts are blocked, and we think that among them, people would be affected” by the rapes, continues the police officer. To trace the identities of these men, investigators are calling on telephone operators, “a job that will take almost two years”. Another method consists of extracting the images found and using facial recognition via software used by the national police: “From the extraction of the photo, this will give us a resemblance rate. This will allow us to identify a third of the perpetrators”, explains Jérémie Bosse Platière.dac/ol/mpm
Related News :