With his head down most of the time during this first of three days of hearing before the Charente-Maritime Assize Court, in Saintes, Jorgo Tare, a 55-year-old Albanian national, looks away when the bailiff tells the jury and to all stakeholders two knives and a pair of scissors. Three weapons that he used one day in May 2022, Thursday the 19th, against the woman who was his wife. It was in La Rochelle, boulevard Sautel.
Same attitude when the investigator comments on the photographs of the crime scene, an attempted homicide. The accused listens to his interpreter but sometimes seems completely foreign to the proceedings. From time to time, his gaze wanders to the victim, Marjeta, mother of their three sons, now aged 21, 19 and 14. Next to him sit two other civil parties: Laurence, a volunteer from an association helping asylum seekers, and the second of the children. Both intervened when Jorgo Tare tried to kill Marjeta. Which most certainly owes them to still being alive.
“The mother is terrified”
The day before the facts judged by the Assize Court, Jorgo Tare, banned from staying in France after being convicted of domestic violence and death threats by the La Rochelle court in 2021, had arrived at Marjeta's home. He tried to strangle her, hit her and threatened to kill her in the presence of the youngest, then 16 years old. He managed to escape. From then on, everything was done to get hold of the violent man, who had apparently arrived in La Rochelle the same day after a journey through Turkey and Switzerland. Injured, his ex-partner was hospitalized. The next morning, May 19, she went to the police station with her younger brother and Laurence. It was agreed that she would return at 2 p.m. for a formal question.
Back on Boulevard Sautel, the two women and the teenager see the window of the house ajar. Fear takes hold of them. They notify the emergency police as they were told in case of doubt. “The mother is terrified,” describes Laurence, the volunteer, on the phone. The police went to the site and inspected the garden and the apartment. They don't find anything suspicious.
“We have no rational explanation,” explains one of the investigators, called to the stand as a witness to the following events. “We were very vigilant on this issue. » Especially since “the accused clearly intended to kill his wife”. But half an hour after the inspection, another frantic call for help. Jorgo Tare, hidden in a soft wardrobe in the bedroom, has just stabbed his ex-partner with a first stab, then a stab with scissors while she is on the sofa. Laurence, the volunteer, intervenes and is injured in the hand. The youngest son manages to take the pair of scissors from his father's hands.
Who grabs a new knife. The teenager, in a state of shock and already traumatized by the violence of the day before, took refuge on the roof of the house. His mother, pursued by the accused, took refuge in a florist located not far away. Jorgo Tare jumped out of the first floor window and fell onto the stairs. Injured in the foot, he was arrested immediately, in a private garden, less than 200 meters from the house. Back on the scene, the investigators discovered, in the flexiblex, a chair which could have served as a step towards the air vent. A blade of fresh grass is spotted.
“She’s lying”
The first day of the debates, which will continue Monday November 18 and Tuesday November 19, will have had a difficult moment with the tears of the eldest, 21 years old, who felt guilty for having told his mother not to divorce. He was a boarder, rarely came to the house and had sent some money to his father when he was sent back to Albania. When on May 18, 2022, a friend of the young man told him that he had seen his father “at the station”, he immediately understood that his mother was in danger. At that moment, only one thought crossed his mind: “If he came back, something is going to go wrong. »
The accused barely reacted. Except to say that his former wife lies about everything, about the violence, the death threats and the attempted homicide. His four-month prison stay in 2021? “It’s his fault. » His children, to varying degrees, also through conflict of loyalties, have recounted recurrent and long-standing violence within the home over the course of their education. A climate of terror from which the very traumatized mother and youngest son have not emerged despite the imprisonment of Jorgo Tare.
The study of the personality of the accused reveals that he grew up in Albania, his native country. He is unable to give his date of birth. At the age of 11, he worked in a collectivist agricultural structure, specific to the communist model of the time. In 1991, he joined Greece. He married three times and had five children. The accused does little to help us see things clearly. However, an event turns his life upside down. In 2006, he suffered a serious accident while riding a motorcycle. He has a long coma; his friend remains paralyzed. In 2018, the family allegedly demanded 100,000 euros from him. Jorgo Tare decides to leave Albania for France in 2019 to escape this “debt” and supposed threats.
