IInvited to speak before the jurors retired to deliberate, the accused displayed incredible grandiloquence: “I am sad and I wish the complainant a good and long life. May the Good Lord bless her! Long live France, long live the Republic! Happy New Year everyone! »
Yero Ba, 59 years old, homeless, Mauritanian national, street musician and physically disabled, will spend time behind bars.
This Wednesday, December 18, the Charente Assize Court ruling on appeal found him guilty of raping a 21-year-old student at knifepoint in 2021 in Bordeaux. The courts sentenced him to fifteen years of criminal imprisonment, a verdict accompanied by a ten-year security sentence and a permanent ban from French territory.
“Treasing and under tension”
Fifteen years: the sentence is higher than the requisitions of the attorney general, who had requested thirteen years and “no trivialization of sexual violence”. The quantum is also heavier than in first instance, last year, before the Gironde departmental criminal court (twelve years).
With an impassive face when the verdict was announced, Yero Ba was accompanied to the Gradignan remand center, pushed in his wheelchair by the police escort who watched over him during the three days of his appeal trial in Angoulême. A curious trial – according to all, “testing and tense” – where the truth was difficult to approach.
What happened on July 29, 2021, between 7:36 p.m. and 7:59 p.m., in the darkness of the underground car park at Place de la Victoire? CCTV shows blurry and grainy images. According to a passerby, whose intervention interrupted the criminal scene, Yero Ba had imposed cunnilingus on Océane D., then aged 21. The political science student was “stunned”, unable to react and defend herself.
The young woman – very involved in helping marginalized people – had met her attacker during a marauding raid. She had followed him unsuspectingly, convinced that she was going to participate in a “disenchantment ritual”. Yero Ba had in fact presented himself as a “sorcerer” who could make the “lucky star” shine in her again.
“Incomplete investigation”
As in the first trial, the accused contested en bloc. His contradictions at the bar and his “pedigree” did not help him: 24 mentions in his criminal record, including ten convictions for violence and one for sexual assault. Other women had accused Yero Ba of rape or attempted rape; at the time, their complaints were closed. All described the same “stratagem” according to Me Fabienne Gouteyron, lawyer for the civil party, the same “mode of operation in three phases” according to Martin Viver-Darviot, general counsel. This “dangerous man” knew how to “instill confidence, isolate and take action”.
Was he a predator? Me Bénédicte Impérial and Me Elena Badescu for the defense pointed to a “poor investigation” and a “fragile case”. They also regretted an audience under “pressure”. The victim, Océane D., had chosen to publicize her complaint and her fight, with the support of Family Planning of Gironde.
Monday morning, the association demonstrated in Angoulême, on the court steps. “Every four minutes, someone is raped or attempted to be raped. This violence is not a figure. These are broken lives,” she says.
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