In 23 years of work organizing the protection of victims of violent spouses, the lawyer from the SOS Victimes 93 association has only experienced one tragic epilogue, one too many: the resounding feminicide of Bouchra Bouali in November 2021, judged this week at the Seine-Saint-Denis conference.
Khalid Fahem, 54, faces life imprisonment for the seventeen stab murder of his wife, nine days after his release from prison where he was serving a sentence for domestic violence. An early release of three weeks about which the justice system had forgotten to inform Bouchra Bouali.
At the opening of this second day of hearing on Wednesday, the lawyer from the SOS Victimes 93 association discusses the powerlessness of the authorities to prevent this announced tragedy, despite three complaints, two incarcerations, a salvo of judicial bans and the activation protocols for protecting vulnerable people.
“You know, he’s going to kill me anyway.”
“I felt a great fear in (Bouchra), which she showed me every time I spoke to her on the phone. This sentence that I unfortunately hear quite regularly but which sometimes resonates differently, and there resonated differently: + you know, he’s going to kill me anyway +”, Nathalie M. testifies on the stand, wearing a loose white blouse over jeans.
At the start of summer 2021, Khalid Fahem is in pre-trial detention while awaiting his trial following two complaints for death threats filed by his 44-year-old wife, who has just announced their breakup.
Worried about this threatening profile fascinated by knives, the Bobigny public prosecutor’s office even before the hearing forwarded the file to SOS Victimes 93 to decide on possible protection measures for Bouchra Bouali.
“What pushed me into (the qualification of) serious danger was the gentleman’s threats, his psychological profile, his cannabis consumption, and the fact that he does not accept the separation,” details the statement. lawyer.
Ready to defend yourself
A few days before the trial, the prosecution and the association therefore gave this owner of a ready-to-wear business a serious danger telephone, which makes it possible to alert the police in the event of a violation by the violent spouse of the ban on contact.
A system that Bouchra Bouali triggers when Khalid Fahem shows up at her home at the beginning of October, just out of his first stay behind bars following his conviction in July. His probationary suspension revoked for two months, he immediately returned to prison.
But in his cell, Khalid Fahem is still ruminating. “He planned to kill his wife. He had no other plans. Just kill her and return to prison,” reports one of his former co-inmates in Fleury-Mérogis, heard by videoconference by the Assize Court.
“She even bought a bulletproof vest”
Bouchra lives on the lookout. In the street, she keeps turning around. She installs a video surveillance camera in her home, changes the lock, and equips herself to defend herself in the event of attack by her husband.
“I accompany several victims who have either a serious danger telephone or an anti-reconciliation bracelet. But protections like a taser and a tear gas bomb, I think that in three years (on the job) is the only one I have seen,” reports the social worker at the Epinay police station, who also follows her.
“She even bought a bulletproof vest. I was shocked with my sisters. But she said + he’s a coward, he can stab me in the back +”, sobbed Rahma Bouali, the victim’s big sister, at the stand.
On November 17, benefiting from a three-week sentence reduction, Khalid Fahem was released again. But the information is not transmitted to Bouchra Bouali or to his interlocutors – which a decree from the Ministry of Justice taken in the wake of the tragedy will make obligatory.
“I remember a lady who was afraid but constantly fighting,” says the lawyer. “And on November 26, 2021, I learned of his death from the Bobigny public prosecutor’s office.”
