A business manager 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 as she returned home. An attack without public claim or apparent motive. The court went beyond the requisitions of the prosecution which had requested four years in prison, one of which was suspended.
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.
This judgment “marks an important moment on the issue of aggression against local elected officials in France, it’s 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.
On the evening of December 20, 2023, Oriane Filhol, sixth deputy mayor in charge of solidarity, was followed in a 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. Slightly injured but seriously psychologically scarred, the young woman with large round glasses and a bob haircut remained at the trial helpless in the face of her questions about the reasons for her attack.
Revenge against the city?
“I have lost part of my freedom, my independence, which I value very much. I can no longer move around after a certain hour alone, I need colleagues to accompany me home.”she told the court, moved.
In January, three young men from Saint-Denis, aged 18 to 22, were arrested by investigators.
At their trial, they explained that they had been promised 2,500 euros each by a mysterious sponsor whose name they kept silent – a “daron”, and “blédard” – to hit someone they didn’t know.
“You just had to hit and say nothing, no theft, nothing. For 2,500 euros I’ll hit, even if it’s a woman,” tells investigators whoever hit the victim. The courts sentenced the attackers to sentences ranging from eight months in prison with suspended probation to eighteen months in prison, six of which were suspended with probation. The court found that two of them did not know the victim’s elected status.
Arrested at the beginning of March, Mouloud Bezzouh admitted in police custody to having been present at the scene but denied any link with the attack. Video surveillance shows him stomping around leaving the Oriane Filhol meeting for almost an hour and a half.
At the June trial, the city’s mayor, Mathieu Hanotin, questioned the possible frustration of the business leader, who had campaigned for him during the municipal elections. Financially strapped, the entrepreneur was hoping to access public markets from the city to get back on his feet.
“It is not our vision to have public contracts because we supported an elected official. If he believed it, I understand that he could have been disappointed”declared the socialist councilor.
Last fall, the Ministry of the Interior anticipated a 15% increase in attacks against elected officials over the whole of 2023, after an increase of 32% in 2022 (2,265 complaints and reports).
