Moha La Squale, here in concert in Paris in 2018.
Getty / David Wolff – Patrick
They recount the insults, the slaps, the fear. He denies everything and cries conspiracy. On the first day Tuesday of the trial of rapper Moha La Squale, tried for violence against six ex-partners, the Paris court looked into the mechanisms of the toxic influence in the couple.
“I tried to leave him several times, but I told myself that things would get better, and we started the same cycle again,” one of the victims, Elodie (name changed), 31, summed up in tears before the criminal court.
“Why me?”
After two years of a chaotic relationship, the young woman finally managed to break up in 2018. “It’s a relief of course. But I’m still so confused: how did I end up in a relationship like that? Why did this happen to me?” wonders Elodie, who is still being followed by a psychologist.
For this first day of hearing, the debates, scheduled until Friday, allowed to discuss the relationships maintained between 2017 and 2021 by the defendant with four of the alleged victims.
The rapper, whose real name is Mohamed Bellahmed, claims to be “not violent.” “Everyone tells their own truth,” the 29-year-old, who is currently in detention, dismissed the issue.
He cries conspiracy
For him, the fact that several victims – some described as “one-night stands” – convinced each other to file a complaint after exchanging ideas on social media amounts to a “conspiracy”.
“She filed a complaint to ruin my life” and “lies a lot,” he says about Elodie. A vocabulary that annoys the president, especially since the defendant denies the facts with great reinforcement of expressions like “On my mother’s life!” or “It seems like I’m the bad guy.”
During the investigation, Elodie told investigators that her partner, possessive and jealous, showered her with insults, followed her everywhere in the street and sometimes flew into an “extreme rage”: he slapped her violently, grabbed her by the hair to pull her to the ground, and spat in her face.
“I had no life left”
She said she suffered several attempts to suffocate or strangle her, including one with a telephone cable. “I had no life left, no human rights left,” she said.
According to her, it was to her that the rapper addressed himself in his title “Luna” in 2018, when he wrote: “Oh, my Luna, it’s you that I want, it’s you that I want / You never make a fuss and for me, you had a hard time.”
The young woman spoke of her difficulty in getting out of this toxic relationship. “He beat me, abused me, cheated on me for so many years, and he’s acting like a sweet guy! So yes, I’m losing my temper!” she exclaimed.
From Prince Charming to Executioner
Another complainant, Chloé (name changed), recounted the serious psychological violence that the rapper, whom she met on the set of a music video, allegedly inflicted on her, using insults and denigrating remarks.
“The first night, he was adorable.” But he quickly alternated between the behavior of a “Prince Charming” and that of an “executioner,” says the young woman, who says she still has “difficulty controlling (her) anxieties” today because of this traumatic experience.
“I liked him a lot, I tried to understand him, even if I saw that he was not a balanced person,” she analyzes. For her, Moha La Squale is someone who “needs help.”
For Me Elise Arfi, the defendant’s lawyer, the expert psychologist who examined Chloé did not judge her to be “under the influence”.
Certainly, responds the plaintiff’s lawyer, Antonin Gravelin-Rodriguez, but he did describe a “relationship that was becoming stifling”, made up of “imposed constraints”. And ultimately leading to a “state of submission”.
