the essential
The public prosecutor requested a sentence of 12 or 13 years of criminal imprisonment against Naïma Bel Allam, the mother of the missing people from Nérac. The latter has been appearing since Monday June 17 before the Lot-et-Garonne Assize Court for the alleged murder of her two multi-handicapped daughters. The verdict is expected at the end of the day.
Thursday June 20, during the fourth and last day of the trial of the missing people of Nérac before the Assize Court of Lot-et-Garonne, the public prosecutor requested 12 or 13 years of criminal imprisonment against the accused Naïma Bel Allam. With three-year socio-judicial monitoring.
The mother is accused of intentional homicide of Inès and Nawal, her two multi-handicapped daughters, and faces life imprisonment. Aged 13 and 11 at the time of their disappearance, the two children, who would now be aged 20 and 18, have not given any sign of life since December 2016. No proof of life has ever been given by the mother and no body was found in seven years of proceedings.
Forming an opinion “on intimate conviction”
The attorney general, who evokes “a special case and a very special hearing”, reminded the jurors “that the discovery of a body or human elements does not constitute murder”. And that they will have to form an opinion “on intimate conviction”.
The public prosecutor will recall the different versions given by Naïma Bel Allam. The first in June 2016, where the accused claims to have entrusted her daughters to Malika, her neighbor in Morocco. Then, she will say that she left Inès and Nawal with a lady also named Malika, mother of a disabled child, at a motorway rest area in Spain, 100 km from Tarifa. This woman allegedly took the girls to Morocco. On May 31, 2018, she will give a third version to investigators. She gave her children to the famous Malika, but she is in a European country. This version will be kept by the accused until the trial.
The accused gives a new version
Wednesday June 19, during her interrogation on the facts by the court, Naïma Bel Allam changed her version for the umpteenth time: her daughters are alive and a group of trusted people has been taking care of them abroad since March 2017. She would have news regularly.
During her submissions, the attorney general also reminded the jurors of the “nauseating odor” smelled by the investigators of the gendarmerie research section during their investigations in the house of Naïma Bel Allam, in September 2017. “The soldiers speak of a smell of death. She also mentioned another suspicious element during the first visit of the gendarmes to the accused’s home in June 2017: “what is striking is the difference between the cleanliness of the girls’ room and the state of abandonment of the rest of the house, which does not correspond with the character of the accused.”
“From the beginning, she has served us a fable that she improves and adapts”
The attorney general dates the trigger for the alleged murder to early December 2016, “when she was refused respite stay by the clinic”. “Naïma Bel Allam was exhausted, in an unsuitable house, with two severely disabled children who, as they grew up, gave her no respite.”
According to the public prosecutor, “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. She will never recognize what she did because she managed to convince herself that her children were still alive. From the beginning, she serves us a fable that she improves and adapts according to the elements provided. investigations”
