Tuesday, at the end of the day, the Haute-Savoie Assizes sentenced a Marseillais to 24 years of criminal imprisonment and 7 years of socio-judicial supervision. The 28-year-old was found guilty of triple attempted murder. On the night of July 23 to 24, 2021, at Luna park in Geneva, he violently attacked three Genevans aged around twenty with a knife. If the accused was alone in the dock, his mother, his sister and his father, recently released from prison, were in the courtroom, providing support. All three have already been tried in Geneva at the end of August 2023 by the Geneva Criminal Court for their involvement in this violent brawl.
On the night of the incident, the family, originally from Marseille, arrived in Cornavin to enjoy the funfair. She crossed paths with a group of young people who came to do the same. A fight broke out. Three of them ended the evening in the Emergency Department and almost lost their lives. The stab wounds did not go far from vital organs. Hence the qualification of attempted murder. Added to this were aggravated violence against two other victims.
Enough to make the attorney general say in his indictment: “You have committed real carnage.” And to ask: “How can a stampede at the funfair end with three people in absolute emergency at the HUG?” In his eyes, there is no doubt about homicidal intent: “It is characterized by the encounter between a lethal weapon and a vital zone.” Referring to the heavy legal past of this young Marseillais, the attorney general added: “Given your experience, I do not believe that you were aiming at random.”
False, replied Me Fadila Tabani-Surmont. “He always repeated: ‘I didn’t want to kill,’” argued the defense lawyer. Trying to have the facts reclassified as violence with a weapon, she reminded the jurors that they must be certain that her client was motivated by homicidal intent. “You should not place yourself at the moment of the consequences, but at the level of the intention,” she insisted. “In this case, you do not have certainty and the doubt must benefit the accused.” The jurors clearly had no doubt.
The father sentenced in Geneva in 2023
During the trial in Geneva, which was held at the end of August 2023 in the absence of the main aggressor, his father, a 50-year-old from Marseillais, was found guilty of attempted serious bodily harm and brawl. He had served three and a half years in prison, after deduction of the preventive period. His wife was considered by the Criminal Court to be the “detonator of the brawl”. Result: fourteen months suspended sentence. Their daughter had received a financial penalty.
