In the Bennis-Alj-Slaoui case, the alleged victim Joséphine claims to have been drugged, then raped by a son from a large family, during an evening in his Moroccan villa, the accused, in detention, mentions a sexual relationship consented, while the young woman denounces a plot, according to Le Figaro who met her in Paris.
This Monday, in Paris, in her lawyer’s office where Le Figaro meets her, Joséphine* appears implacably calm. Sometimes, her gaze falls on her neatly manicured hands when she describes the chronology of this evening where everything changed. With an absent gesture, she smoothes a long brown lock, and continues: “I am determined to fight. I will go all the way,” she says, in a serious tone, under the misty eye of her mother who accompanies her.
Coincidence: that same day, 2000 kilometers further south, a judge of the Court of Appeal of Casablanca rejected requests for release from the counsel of Kamil Bennis and M’hammed Alj, shedding light on this affair for the umpteenth time which has pitted them against the young Frenchwoman for two months. Also still in detention, Saad Slaoui, the third accused, must be heard by the judge next week.
Coming from powerful Moroccan industrial families, these three heirs were placed in preventive detention on 21
November, after the complaints of rape, in Paris then in Casablanca, from Joséphine. The young woman, a 27-year-old lawyer, claims to have been drugged during an evening at Kamil Bennis’s house, then kidnapped and raped by him, in a room in his villa, with the complicity of the other suspects.
“We welcome this decision of the judge, commensurate with the seriousness of the facts with which the accused are accused, but also all the work accomplished by Moroccan justice at this stage,” explains one of Joséphine’s lawyers, Me Ghizlane Mamouni, present at alongside him in Paris this Monday. Confident in the face of the “solidity of the evidence” which continues to be brought into the file, the civil party is now waiting for witnesses to be heard supporting the facts denounced by the complainant.
+ Casablanca daddy’s boys +
Kamil Bennis, who should therefore still be staying in Oukacha prison for some time, talks about a consensual sexual relationship with Joséphine. During his interview with investigators, in police custody – which Le Figaro was able to consult – he described it as a moment of madness, which he later regretted: “It lasted about 10 minutes. Afterwards, I went down to the living room and felt regretful about what had happened.”
Last week, a salvo of attacks in the Moroccan press undermined the thoughts of Joséphine, who was celebrating Christmas with her family, making her decide to break the silence.
In an article in the Moroccan media Le 360, the defense of several defendants – apart from that of Saad Slaoui, none responded to requests from Le Figaro – refers to a “consensual sexual relationship, but poorly accepted the next day”. According to them, “because she shames” Joséphine’s companion, cousin of the host and present during this evening. “She was unable to find even a single person to confirm her allegations, knowing that the evening brought together around a hundred guests,” concludes the defense.
This is not the first time this has been a media outburst. By attacking these three men, the young woman is also attacking eminent surnames, counted among the greatest fortunes in the country. Kamil Bennis, an entrepreneur in his late forties, happens to be the nephew of the current CEO of the pharmaceutical laboratory Laprophan, Farid Bennis, and the son of the deceased Ali Bennis, known to have held the reins of the group from 2011 to 2018, in parallel to a career as a diplomat.
Saad Slaoui, who lives between London and Casablanca, is presented as the heir to a long family of entrepreneurs. As for M’hammed Ali, he is none other than the son of the president of the powerful General Confederation of Moroccan Enterprises (CGEM), the equivalent of Medef in Morocco.
On November 2, the 27-year-old lawyer went with her fiancé, Bilal*, to her cousin Kamil Bennis, for an evening in his villa in Anfa – a preserved residential area, facing the sea.
Caterer, security service, DJ: around a vast swimming pool flanked by palm trees, Casablanca’s small globalized elite was invited that evening. But around 4 a.m., after a few glasses of champagne and a gin and tonic, Joséphine plunges into a “black hole”. “Everything was going well, I was sitting on a sofa with a friend with whom I had a long conversation. Shortly before, I had danced with Bilal,” she says. “And then, nothing. My memories end there.”
+ Uninhibited and amnesiac +
The rest is reported to her by her fiancé, who is alarmed to see her, suddenly, very uninhibited. “My partner explained to me that I had been super tactile with other men (…) that I had sat on the knees of several, including his cousin. Whereas I am not at all tactile,” she assured investigators when she filed a complaint for the first time, in Paris, on November 7. “He saw that my outlook was different, that I was not myself.”
Bilal accompanies him to one of the rooms upstairs, and enlists the services of a domestic worker to help him put his fiancée to bed. But when he returns to look for her at dawn, the door is guarded by several individuals. According to his words, reported by Joséphine, he then understood that Kamil Bennis was in the room with her. He belches, comes to blows, but he is refused entry. Around 8 a.m., he says, he was expelled from the evening, without the police, whom he claims to have called, coming to the scene.
Faced with investigators, Kamil Bennis also says that Joséphine suddenly appears very uninhibited. But he does not attribute this radical change in behavior to a drug ingested without his knowledge.
According to him, a violent argument then broke out between Joséphine and her fiancé. “The latter called her a whore, accusing her of flirting with people present that evening. We managed to separate them,” assures Kamil Bennis. Then, a domestic worker put her in a room, and “managed to calm her down”, according to him.
The host of the evening then goes upstairs and enters the room. “Josephine asked me to stay because she wanted me to protect her. After the servant left, she started rubbing against me and explicitly asking me to have sex.
She even locked the door,” continues Kamil Bennis. Concerning the complicity of the other two accused, he adds:
“Saad Slaoui informed me that Joséphine had also tried to seduce him, but nothing happened between them.”
+ Pressure on the family +
Today, for Bilal, employed by the CGEM, the situation is particularly sensitive, according to his fiancée. “His family supports us both, but they receive pressure,” confides Joséphine, without elaborating. On December 5, Bilal withdrew from the case by withdrawing his complaint for “assault and battery” filed in Casablanca, just after the events. She continues: “We wanted to get married in Morocco, start a family there.” “We stick together. But then he came home to his parents in tears, lost and very angry. He only understood the next day, when I told him I didn’t remember anything.”
On the morning of November 3, Joséphine was awakened by phone calls from her friend Pauline*. Very alarmed, she reports Bilal’s words to him. On his advice, she leaves the villa groggy, after crossing paths with Kamil Bennis and Saad Slaoui. The latter reassures Joséphine, who has no memory of the evening. “Saad, who I don’t know, told me it was a misunderstanding. That it was Bilal’s fault who had lost his temper,” the young woman remembers.
“But when I did the urine test for toxicology analyzes at the laboratory, I realized that something serious had happened.” It is 5:30 p.m. and Joséphine then feels persistent pain in her penis.
+ “New evidence” +
However, in the premises of the 3rd DP) in Paris, Joséphine discovered that she had not been tested for GHB – also known as the “violet drug” – as she claimed to have expressly requested. Likewise, a positive result for cocaine, which she swears not to have consumed, sows embarrassment in this high-voltage instruction, where many gray areas must be illuminated.
On the other hand, the young woman, who says she noticed the presence of bruises on her legs, also left her clothes for analysis in a forensic unit upon her return to Paris on November 4. “These results are confidential for the moment. We do not want to violate the secrecy of the investigation, as the defense by strategy has decided to do,” says Me Ghizlane Mamouni.
The lawyer, a specialist in sexual violence cases, adds: “GHB or any other substance can be detected by means other than the toxicological analysis to be carried out within twelve hours following a rape.” “New evidence has since been brought into the file,” she assures. (With Le Figaro)
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