“Lermirant started looking at me funny. Then he looked at me badly. He wasn’t the Lermirant from before,” the accused explains to the jurors. In hasty phrasing, he recounts his version of this Sunday, May 17, 2020 where he killed the 17-year-old with a bullet to the heart, in the parking lot at 14, avenue Île-de-France in the Planoise district, in Besançon.
“I insisted on getting my phone back, there were important contacts,” continues Islem Djoghlal, 27 years old today and 23 at the time, when he was carrying out temporary assignments in Switzerland. “He told me that if I didn’t leave, they would go after my mother. I didn’t recognize him, I didn’t know what to do anymore. »
He then tells how he went home to get the 22 LR Smith & Wesson revolver with which, once back with three friends who hitched a ride, he killed Lermirant Fazliu, just 12 seconds after getting out of the car, as shown by CCTV cameras.
A very short period of time which does not fit with the fictionalized version he makes of it (new argument, shoving, weapon brandished by the cannon to deliver a blow with the butt and attempt by the victim to grab it).
The only frame is the end of the story: “He stepped back, he was facing me, I held the weapon with both hands, with all my strength, without aiming anywhere. And a shot went off. » Shortly after he added: “I didn’t know if the gun was loaded…”
“A murder, even impulsive, remains murder”
Astonishment of Attorney General Thérèse Brunisso: “You nevertheless claimed that you had panicked, for fear that the victim would take the weapon from you and kill you with it. Good thing you knew it was loaded! » The accused replies: “You can also kill with rifle butts…”
An argument that the prosecution will brush aside in its indictment: “Why did you pull the trigger if he didn’t know that it was loaded? He can say whatever he wants. To me, there’s no doubt that when he pulls the trigger, it’s to kill. Especially since with a trigger that requires a pressure of 4.8 kg, to shoot, you have to want to shoot. A murder, even impulsive, is still murder. »
“All this for an ego dispute, a futility”
Twenty years of imprisonment having been required out of the thirty incurred, Me Scrève, for the defense, pleads the absence of homicidal intent in an attempt to have the facts reclassified as “fatal blows with a weapon”. In his eyes, in fact, “the author’s state of mind was not to kill but he was afraid. Surrounded and stressed, he grabbed the weapon and the shot went off. »
A thesis that the jury did not follow by retaining the murder and sentencing Islem Djoghlal to 17 years of imprisonment.
Previously, for the civil party, Mare Chavy and Nicolle had described “the devastation” of the family of the missing young man. Which she repeated to the jurors: “We will never forgive”.
“For them this death is an amputation,” the lawyers stressed. “A life sentence. All because a ‘big guy’ lost face and wasn’t taken seriously by a ‘little guy’. All this for an ego dispute, a futility. »
