“It is a decision which will complicate his conditions of detention and which will distance me from my client.“. Félix Gluckstein, Sylvain Jouanneau’s lawyer, reacts on France Bleu Normandie two days after the decision of the Caen Court of Appeal. The investigating chamber confirmed on Tuesday the continued pre-trial detention of Sylvain Jouanneau, after his indictment for murder. His lawyer plans to appeal to the Court of Cassation.
Mathis’ father was sentenced in Caen in 2015 to 20 years in prison for kidnapping and sequestration of his son, then 8 years old, missing since 2011. An investigation into intentional homicide continued after the trial. And it produced results. Thirteen years later, a DNA trace which could be that of Mathis was discovered in Sylvain Jounneau’s car. The investigating judge decided on April 24, 2024 to indicted for intentional homicide.
“As part of this new procedure, we must maintain proximity“, explains Félix Gluckstein. He has been assisting Sylvain Jouanneau since the latter arrived in Dordogne to serve his sentence. “The pre-trial detention regime firstly considerably reduces one’s opportunities to work in prison or follow training, he continues. It also distances me from my client, and complicates access to the file“. Since his indictment, Sylvain Jouanneau has been detained at the Ifs remand center, near Caen.
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Murder indictment raises new questions
Since Mathis’ disappearance in 2011, Sylvain Jouanneau always refused to say what he had done with the child, claiming that he had entrusted it to third parties abroad. This version was undermined during the trial before the Calvados Assize Court. The psychiatric experts had invoked the Medea syndrome, which consists of harming one’s child to take revenge on the other parent. They also highlighted its narcissistic profilehis dark secret allowing him to exist, revealing it would make him invisible to everyone.
So will he ever speak? “Don’t count on it, he will never say anything“, said Mathis’ mother’s lawyer, Aline Lebret, categorically in front of the investigating chamber in Caen on Tuesday. Not so sure, replied Sylvain Jouanneau’s lawyer. “We move forward step by step, confides Félix Gluckstein. I’m not saying that it couldn’t vary, because we had some interesting discussions on possible avenues to perhaps unblock things in one direction or another. But for the moment, it is far too early for me to come forward and reveal his choice, which moreover I do not yet know on these questions“Sylvain Jouanneau is in any case still “very concerned and invested in his defense in this matter“.
