The court followed the prosecutor’s requisitions and did not adhere to the defendant’s cries of innocence… His counsel, Maître Dounia Hamchouch, pleaded for acquittal.
“JI have nothing to do with this police station, I have nothing to do with this fire and with drug trafficking in Pissevin.”proclaimed throughout the legal debates before the Nîmes criminal court, this Friday, January 10, the 28-year-old defendant.
The defendant, already known for other offenses, has never been convicted of drug-related offenses. He was on the run when the police office in the sensitive Pissevin district burned down on the night of August 21 to 22.
Throughout the police custody and during the procedure he stressed that he was not in this neighborhood at the time of the fire which destroyed the police office which was to be inaugurated a few days later. But today in the defendant’s box he changes his version and affirms that it was he who was photographed by a video surveillance camera 40 minutes before the flames.
” We do not fully understand your position, you have indicated until now that you were not present on the national territory at the time of the events”questions President Edouard Le Jan. ” I don’t know what I’m doing here, I have nothing to do with this traffic.” ” I was walking in the neighborhood where I have lived for 28 years”, resumes the accused. 40 minutes before the start of the disaster, the respondent was actually walking near the scene of the fire with the minor. The latter, aged 15, was convicted in this case last December.
-“Everyone in the neighborhood knows who did this. It’s the minor with Perpignan”affirms the defendant without wanting to specify what this nickname of Perpignan corresponds to.
For the Nîmes criminal court, the defendant was incriminated by the minor during the hearing before the children’s court last December.
A defendant who, despite his cries of innocence throughout the hearing, receives a sentence of 8 years in prison and continued detention. A man who did not listen to his punishment until the end and who left between two prison officers for many years in prison. He was sentenced to 8 years in prison and continued detention, this was the punishment requested by the Nîmes public prosecutor’s office. In addition, he is banned from entering the Gard capital.
The defense lawyer, Maître Dounia Hamchouch, who had detailed “the numerous inconsistencies of the investigation” immediately announced that it would appeal the decision. “What interest did he have in seeing this police station burn”, “there is no exculpatory evidence for my client in this case, we want to do a lot with nothing” … Comments which were not heard this Friday by the magistrates at first instance. The Nîmes Criminal Court of Appeal will have to say within a few months whether it shares the opinion of the criminal court or whether it believes in the innocence claimed loudly and clearly by this defendant…
