“Baby, I know, I messed up, it’s Paname and its cleavage.” In his song, entitled My baerapper Moha La Squale seems to regret his behavior towards a girlfriend with whom he was “not courteous.” Did he draw inspiration from reality to write this title in 2022? The artist, aged 29, is in fact accused of violence by seven women with whom he had relationships. Four years after the start of the case, Mohamed Bellahmed – his real name – appears from this Tuesday before the 14th correctional chamber of the Paris judicial court. The trial is scheduled to last until Friday.
It all started with the publication of an article in Pointin September 2020, announcing that three former partners of the rapper had filed a complaint against him at a police station in the 9th arrondissement of Paris. Aged 23 to 28, they say they were victims of violence at the hands of the musician, who also allegedly held them captive. One of them testifies in a video posted on Instagram. Her story immediately echoes what Marine and Anaïs* experienced. The two young women were also in a relationship with Mohamed Bellahmed. And they also decided to confide their ordeal to the police.
“War female dog”
Marine had an intimate relationship with Moha La Squale since December 2016. He quickly told her that he was in love with her. According to the victim’s account, he began to act suspicious, aggressive, and even invasive. Their relationship deteriorated abruptly. The blows began to fall. The first time was because a man had taken her home after an evening spent in a bar. That night, Mohamed Bellahmed harasses her on the phone and waits for her in the street. He pushes her against a piece of furniture and insults her. “War female dog… you need to get lifted, bitch, dirty whore.”
The arguments continued, she continued. Marine claims to have been threatened and slapped by her boyfriend, who also pulled her hair and spat on her. To the police, she described an unstable, violent, jealous, dangerous, manipulative man, addicted to weed, who created a climate of terror. In February 2018, she was afraid of dying when he strangled her on the bed, comparing her to “a piece of shit under [s] a shoe”.
The young woman recounts another episode that took place during a vacation in Spain. Mohamed Bellahmed allegedly hit her because he was convinced that she was cheating on him with her cousin’s boyfriend. He touched her crotch and said to her: “You see, you’re wet.”
“He threatened me with reprisals”
The complainant recounted her boyfriend’s paranoid attacks to relatives who noticed the marks of beatings on her body. Sometimes, the rapper looks in the bathroom trash cans to check that she has not shaved for another man. He regularly follows her in the street to see where she is going.
Marine wants to leave him. But she is afraid. “He threatened me with reprisals, to send men to slash my face… or to rape me in a cellar and he would come himself to carve ‘the Shark’ on the skin of my back,” she tells the police.
Anaïs met Moha La Squale in August 2019. The artist had approached her in the street and followed her in a car, insisting that she give him her number. Their relationship lasted barely a year. Because very quickly, the young man showed his other side, she says. In January 2020, during a trip to Thailand, the lack of cannabis was felt and he threw black tantrums. One evening, he threatened to kill her. “I’m going to have you killed, I’m going to smoke you.” Two months later, the couple left for Morocco. This time, there was no question of being high on hash. Mohamed Bellahmed forced her to carry some in her vagina during the trip.
“Shit paranoia”
Back in France, the young woman tried to leave him. But he was violent and held her captive to force her to change her mind. “He locked the door to his house when I told him I wanted to leave. He put the keys in his pocket and then told me: ‘the only time you’ll leave my house will be to go into police custody and get fucked by tramps, that’ll make me hard'”. Thanks to the intervention of a neighbor who heard her scream, Marine managed to escape.
In May 2020, he forced his way into her home, Anaïs describes. He pushed her onto her bed, took off her clothes, and tried to suffocate her with a pillow, screaming that he was going to kill her and her mother, rape his girlfriend, and kill her husband. Questioned by investigators, Anaïs’s relatives and neighbors all confirmed hearing him scream and seeing him cry often.
The rapper seems to have taken a long time to grasp the seriousness of the accusations against him. On several occasions, he failed to appear when summoned by the police and magistrates. Placed in police custody on June 14, 2021, he admitted to having cheated on and insulted Marine a lot. But he swears that he did not assault her. He also admits to having been verbally violent with Anaïs and having “insulted her like crazy”. A behavior that he attributes to “paranoia about shit”. But he denies having hit or strangled her. “My client is not in a spirit of revenge,” he tells 20 Minutes Sarah Beaucamp, who is defending Anaïs. “She just wants to be heard by professionals and for justice to be served calmly. She will be there to talk about herself, to tell the difficult things she has experienced.”
“Conspiracy”
The person concerned defended himself by referring to a “conspiracy” on the social network X, assuring that he had “never, EVER, raised his hand to a woman”. “She doesn’t want to harm him, she doesn’t care what happens to him,” he explained to 20 Minutes Me Fabien Guilbaud, Marine’s lawyer. “All she wants is for her words as a victim to be heard and for justice to recognize that she suffered violence for two years, almost uninterrupted. She is eager for the trial to be over, because it is difficult for her to immerse herself in the facts that she has had to recount several times.”
Contacted by 20 MinutesMohamed Bellahmed’s lawyer, Me Elise, Arfi, did not respond to our requests.
* Names have been changed
