Did Mahmoud H. kill Sihem Belouahmia by accident or did he strangle him? This is what the investigating judges hope to discover, this Monday, November 18, during a reconstruction of the murder of the 18-year-old high school student, whose body was found on February 1, 2023, in a wood in Les Salles -du-Gardon (Gard), said the lawyer of the main suspect, Me Jean-Marc Darrigade, to Le Parisien, confirming information from RTL.
Because the magistrates want to confront the version of the alleged murderer with the findings of the forensic doctor and the testimonies of the high school student's relatives. As Le Parisien revealed last February, the autopsy concluded that he died of strangulation leading to cardiorespiratory arrest. But Mahfoud H. claims to have killed Sihem by accident during an argument linked to their romantic relationship, denying having strangled her.
A relationship “invented by Mahfoud to reduce his sentence”?
The other question in this file is precisely that of this supposed romantic relationship mentioned by the 40-year-old suspect, the ex-companion of one of Sihem's cousins. “I made two mistakes,” explains the forty-year-old. The first is having slept with Sihem (…) The second is that the more we moved forward in time, the more she clung and the more difficult it was for me to extricate myself from her,” he said. -he declared before the investigating judge.
According to Mahfoud H., the high school student threatened to reveal the nature of their relationship to her cousin. “I didn't get up that morning and tell myself that I was going to kill her (…) I was in front of her, I put my hand on her mouth, I didn't want to kill her, I just wanted to silence her. (…) When Sihem collapsed I didn’t think she was dead…” he explained. A version which clashes with the conclusions of the forensic doctor.
Especially since the high school student's entourage claims to have never been aware of this relationship. “I have never seen or heard things that show that Sihem had a romantic relationship with Mahfoud,” confided Sihem’s best friend, according to information from Le Parisien. “For me, this relationship never existed,” said another friend of Sihem, before evoking a theory: “I think this relationship was invented by Mahfoud to reduce his sentence.”
The trail of a “plan” to pocket money
Magistrates and investigators believe that the suspect could have invented this relationship to hide a more murky project. Shortly before his death, Sihem confided to several friends that he had “a plan” with his cousin’s ex to pocket money.
In their summary, the gendarmes explained that “Sihem and Mahfoud H. had planned to make believe that a dealer looking for a nanny had carrot that this one was Sihem,” revealed Le Parisien at the time. A hypothesis that the suspect refutes, claiming to have never “involved Sihem in such an enterprise”.
The 18-year-old high school student disappeared on January 25, 2023 after leaving her 95-year-old grandmother's home around 11 p.m. Mahfoud H., was arrested six days later, on January 31, and placed in police custody by the gendarmes of the Nîmes research section. He confessed to the murder the following night, before leading investigators to a wood in Salles-du-Gardon (Gard), where he abandoned the body of the high school student.
A repeat offender, Mahfoud H. was notably sentenced to twelve years in prison for armed robbery in 2015 and he was to be tried again for similar offenses on February 1, 2023.
