They have been missing for seven years. The mother accused of killing her severely disabled little girls was sentenced Thursday to 14 years of criminal imprisonment by the Lot-et-Garonne Assize Court.
On Wednesday, Naïma Bel Allam defended herself by insisting “loud and clear” that her two daughters, aged 12 and 13 at the time of their disappearance, were “still alive” and that she had news of them, even if she has not seen them “since March 2017”.
“Naïma Bel Allam could have provided proof of life which would have stopped everything but she did not do it. Everyone would have wanted the girls to be alive but they are not,” declared general counsel Corinne Chateigner, who had requested between 12 and 13 years of imprisonment. “She will never recognize what she did because she managed to convince herself that her children were still alive,” added the magistrate who recalled that “the discovery of a body or human elements does not does not constitute murder.
Different versions
For defense lawyer Sophie Grolleau, “in this case, everyone is talking about hypotheses, several possibilities; that necessarily means that there is a doubt, and in law, the doubt must benefit the accused.” “Disappointed” with the verdict, the defense “reserves the right to appeal”.
Naïma Bel Allam, who appeared free for “aggravated intentional homicide”, admitted on Wednesday to having changed her version out of distrust of the authorities and fear of her daughters being placed “under guardianship”. This ex-accountant of Moroccan origin initially declared having entrusted her daughters to a Moroccan couple at a motorway rest area in Spain, a version denied by investigators. At the hearing, the fifty-year-old said she gave them to a “group of friends” whom she met in 2015 in Morocco.
The two teenagers, born with malformations, were last seen on December 7, 2016 in the specialized institute of Tonneins (Lot-et-Garonne), where they were taken care of.
“We don’t have the answers”
First prosecuted for “abandonment of minors” and incarcerated from September 2017 to November 2021, Naïma Bel Allam saw her indictment reclassified in January 2018, after the discovery of a “brownish” stain at the Nérac home presenting the DNA from one of his daughters. Asked on Wednesday about her thorough cleaning of this stain, the accused responded confusedly: “When I clean, I do it thoroughly.”
“Today we have a conviction, but it is not a success because we do not have the answers we expected,” reacted Me Sylvie Brussiau, the lawyer of the father of the teenagers, who was separated from Naïma Bel Allam and had not seen his daughters for several years when they disappeared.
