Marie-Hélène Herouart / Le Figaro
INVESTIGATION – This mother of three children was burned alive by her husband even though she had filed a complaint on several occasions. Two reports have highlighted dysfunctions within the police, justice and prison administration. Three years later, the same questions remain unanswered.
On March 15, 2021, Chahinez Daoud slipped between two downpours to go to the Mérignac police station, a stone’s throw from Place Charles-de-Gaulle. The building is cramped, degraded, dilapidated. The ceiling seems ready to collapse at any moment. Sometimes the receptionist even wades in toilet water. This mother of three is 31 years old. She is a town hall employee in the school canteen of the local school. She absolutely wants to file a complaint against her husband, Mounir Boutaa, with whom she is in the process of separating.
That morning, her companion, a 45-year-old mason, kidnapped her in the parking lot of the Carrefour supermarket, in Burck, not far from Mérignac. He had hailed her when she had just dropped her children off at school. She had refused to speak to him. Mounir Boutaa then pushed her into his van, where he strangled her, slapped her and punched her twice in the face. When she tried to escape, her ex-husband ripped off her scarf and tried to strangle her again. Chahinez Daoud finally managed to escape from the hands of her attacker and took refuge in the Carrefour store. Mounir Boutaa followed her, threw her scarf and left.
The police officer sitting opposite Chahinez Daoud listens, silent. He taps half-heartedly on his keyboard, before handing the mother a brochure with the references of victim assistance associations. He himself, three months earlier, had been the perpetrator of domestic violence: on February 10, the Bordeaux criminal court sentenced him to an eight-month suspended prison sentence with non-registration of this conviction in the criminal record. B2. This is a bulletin accessible to state public administrations when they receive, in particular, applications for jobs within the public service. As is the procedure, the police officer sends the victim assessment questionnaire (EVVI) and the complaint to the prosecution. But, according to the prosecution, Chahinez Daoud’s complaint was never transmitted, and the questionnaire written by the police officer was partially illegible.
Failure chain
This police officer constitutes the first link in a chain of failures which, on May 4, 2021, will lead to tragedy: that day, shortly after 6 p.m., and despite pleas and cries, Mounir Boutaa burned his wife alive in the middle of street, a few meters from her home, where she lived with her children aged 3, 5 and 8. The Franco-Algerian, already convicted seven times, was arrested half an hour later in the neighboring town of Pessac. He carried a 12 gauge rifle, a gas pistol and a cartridge belt. To investigators, the person concerned declared that he wanted “to punish” Chahinez. He assures that he did not want to kill her, but just “burn it a little to leave marks on it“. The Bordeaux floor…
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