Accused ofkidnapping and of sequestration followed by mortAdama Coulibaly enters, this Monday, November 25, in the accused box of the judicial court of Beauvais where he appeared before the Oise Assize Court.
Four years after the events and in pre-trial detention since October 15, 2020, Adama Coulibaly is barely audible when he gives his identity before listening to President Denis Kenette read a summary of the procedure.
It all started on September 24, 2020 on the A1 in the Province-Paris direction near the village of Pontarmé where a body was discovered on the road. Arriving on the scene, emergency services could only note the death of Elijah Bougrer-Cinq-Val who was hit by several vehicles including a Spanish heavy goods vehicle.
A credit card scam
The three other passengers in the Clio in which the victim was traveling informed the police and said they were going to the capital to spend the evening. They then specify that without being able to restrain him, Elijah Bougrer-Cinq-Val jumped from the moving car. Still according to these witnesses, before committing this fatal act, the young man cried and shouted that everything was over for him.
The next day, Wesley Askri, who was part of the trip, was found very seriously injured in a building in the Commanderie district of Nogent-sur-Oise and died a few hours later at Creil hospital: a new tragedy which brought investigators to think that it is a settling of scores and this new element is corroborated when these same gendarmes discover that Elijah Bougrer-Cinq-Val is suspected by Adama Coulibaly and Wesley Askri of being the author of a credit card scam involving a sum of just under 500 euros.
A damning testimony
After reading Adama Coulibaly’s personality survey where members of his family assure that he is not talkative and that he is not mean, it is one of his former companions who comes to testify. A young woman who lived with the accused for almost three years and paints an uncompromising portrait of her ex: “At the start, he was a good person but after a few months of living together, he was violent with me, he beat me with a belt, he locked me in the bathroom so I couldn’t get out. He was a liar, a manipulator and I was totally under his influence. He found me on Facebook and we experienced real toxic love. He went so far as to make me drink bleach that he had put in a Coke bottle to punish me for going to a club without him. I was his pain, he spat in my face and didn’t hesitate to take me out naked into the street. I’m sure he could have killed me…”
Reacting to these comments, Adama Coulibaly refutes all of these allegations but at least admits to having been violent with her only once because she had, according to him, pushed him to the limit…
A first hearing which bodes well for the main question which should be at the center of the debates: that of knowing whether Elijah Bougrer-Cinq-Val voluntarily ejected himself from the car or whether he was voluntarily pushed out of the vehicle. In the meantime, Adama Coulibaly remains presumed innocent.
L.G.
