The person who ordered the attack on the deputy mayor of Saint-Denis, Oriane Filhol, was sentenced in his absence to three years in prison. The three attackers were also convicted.
The Bobigny criminal court on Thursday sentenced a business manager to five years in prison, two of which were suspended, for having ordered, for an unknown reason, the attack last December on a deputy mayor of Saint-Denis.
The judgment went beyond the requisitions of the prosecution which had requested four years in prison, one of which was suspended.
“Serial” entrepreneur from this town of Seine-Saint-Denis, involved in the associative world, Mouloud Bezzouh, 57, was found guilty of having sent young people, against the promise of remuneration, to beat up Oriane Filhol while She was going home.
On the evening of December 20, 2023, Oriane Filhol, sixth deputy mayor in charge of solidarity, was followed in the street in Saint-Denis by two men as she left the board of directors of the city’s social landlord and returned home. Caught as she tried to escape, the thirty-year-old was beaten up in the lobby of a building where she had taken refuge. The attack caused an outcry.
A month later, in January, three young men from Saint-Denis, aged 18 to 22, were arrested and convicted. At their trial, they explained that they had been promised 2,500 euros each by a mysterious sponsor, whose name they withheld, to hit a person they did not know.
Arrested at the beginning of March by Territorial Security police officers and then placed under judicial supervision, Mouloud Bezzouh did not come to the hearing on June 11, and was also not present when the deliberations were announced. The court issued a committal warrant against him.
I lost part of my freedom
Oriane Filhol, deputy mayor in charge of Solidarity
Slightly injured but seriously psychologically scarred, the young woman, with large round glasses and a bob haircut, remained without answers to her questions about the reasons for her attack.I lost part of my freedom, my independence, which I value very much. I can no longer travel alone after a certain time, I need colleagues to accompany me to my home“, she told the court at the hearing.
This judgment “marks an important moment on the question of the aggression of local elected officials in France, it is really a relief“, Katy Bontinck, first deputy to PS Mayor Mathieu Hanotin, told AFP at the end of the hearing.
“This firm response highlights the need to open our eyes to the fact that tomorrow representative democracy will no longer have representatives, particularly at the local level.“, she estimated.
