“At no time did I want to kill anyone”, at the trial for murder and attempted murder of the Fadil brothers, the word given to the accused

Marcel Vadella has been appearing since Tuesday before the Haute-Corse assizes for the murder of Jamal Fadil and the attempted murder of Jaoide Fadil. On the second day of the hearing, the accused was called to reveal his version of the facts.

“Today, what state of mind are you in? ?” “Anguish“, responds Marcel Vadella to the president of the assize court, Michel Bonifassi. On the second day of his assize trial for murder and attempted murder, the fifty-year-old was invited to speak about what he said. passed this Saturday, December 19, 2020.

“At first everything went well“, remembers the accused. Manager of the bar “L'Arcole” in the Lupino district, in Bastia, he is also the owner of an annex, the walls of which he rents to the Fadil brothers, who manage their own bar there, “The Typical”. But in 2020, men stop paying their rent.

And then, Jaoide Fadil said to me: “the next time you send me a message like that, I’ll rip your head off”

On December 18, he went to the bar “Le Typique” to discuss, he said, this problem with the Fadil brothers. “I tell them that we have to find a solution for the premises: either you pay, or you leave. […]” But upset by a Whatsapp message sent the day before asking for debt recovery, Jaoide Fadil threatens him. “He said to me: 'the next time you send me a message like that, I'll rip your head off“. “Marcel Vadella then says he was pushed to the ground, then severely beaten.

Thanks in particular to the intervention of a passerby, the fifty-year-old managed to extricate himself and return to his car. Jaoide Fadil threatens him again, he says: “You, the bar, you open it more“.

On December 19, if he went out with his pistol, bought ten years earlier from a private individual but never used before, it was out of fear, he admitted. “I took this weapon to protect myself if they carried out their threats. It was to save my life and possibly intimidate them. Not to shoot them.“

But when he arrives at his bar early in the afternoon, the Fadil brothers approach him almost immediately. The tone rises once again. “I had the misfortune of saying: “Come on, I’m going to the police station.”

A sentence that makes them “disconnectsr” : “Jaoide punches me. And then Jamal lunges at me, and I see him take a blade out of his pocket. I take out my gun and fire. It happened in a fraction of a second.” “You knew the gun was chambered ?“, asks Michel Bonifassi. Yes, confirms the accused, “but I never intended to kill“.

If there hadn't been a knife, I wouldn't have fired.

No other witness saw the blade that Marcel Vadella is talking about, points out the president of the Assize Court. The accused is leaning towards an external intervention which would have made him disappear. “If there hadn't been a knife, I wouldn't have had the feeling of imminent death that I had. If there hadn't been a knife, I wouldn't have fired.“

Marcel Vadella says he does not remember how many times he fired. “One moment I hold my gun towards the ground and shoot, and I hear : stop, stop, stop shooting. And there I see Jaoide, one knee on the ground, in the middle of the road, and he says to me : “You killed my brother, it's over for you”, and he gets up and goes into a car“.

“I had this survival instinct, he finally blurted out, his voice trembling with emotion. But there isn't a day that I don't think about it. I killed a man“, he concluded, wiping his tears.

Advising Jaoide Fadil, Me Mourad Battikh opens the questions on behalf of the civil party. “What I have never heard is an apology for the victims. Is the fact of never speaking about the victims except in bad terms a desire on your part, or should we interpret it differently? ?“

“You know, this is the first time I am addressing a court. I can't imagine their father's pain. I apologize that this injury led to death. At no time did I want to kill anyone.“

“Do you think it was a mistake on your part to keep this weapon?“, asked Mr. Jean-Baptiste Ortal-Cipriani, counsel to the father of the Fadil brothers. “This gun saved my life. If I hadn't had it, I might not be here today.“

For the public prosecutor, Jean-Philippe Navarre, that Marcel Vadella, immediately after the events, did not confide in any of his relatives present at the scene of the incident “[qu’il aurait] been threatened by a knife, [sa] life would have been at stake“seems amazing.”I didn't think about it at the time“, breathes the accused. “He was in shock“, intervenes Me Camille Romani, his counsel.

In addition to the interrogation of the accused, this second day of the trial also allowed us to enter into the technical part of this case, and to focus on the various questions that punctuate the case.

How many bullets hit Jaoide Fadil ?

Was Jaoide Fadil hit by two different shots, or by one shot in the leg, and by bullet fragments in the thigh and buttock? ? On this point, the experts interviewed this Wednesday are divided. For a first doctor – the one who directly examined the man after his treatment at the Bastia hospital – the wounds have two clear entry holes, and therefore result from two gunshots.

An opinion which is not shared by a second doctor, who analyzed Jaoide Fadil's wounds several days after the events : for this professional, only one shot – and not two – directly hit the civilian party. The injuries to the buttock and thigh were more likely to be caused by particles from a ricocheting projectile than by a direct bullet impact.

Finally, for the gunshot residue expert, different hypotheses are possible. The first, and the one she favors, is that of two differentiated shots. However, the expert does not rule out the possibility of fragments of a bullet fired on the ground, near the victim, which would have injured him. A hypothesis for all that”much less likely“, she insists.

What shooting distance ?

How far was Marcel Vadella from Jamal and Jaoide Fadil ? According to the accused, the three men were very close at the time of the shooting, and Jamal Fadil was preparing “to throw himself at him”, presenting a threat in this context, recalls his counsel, Me Camille Romani.

During the reconstructions, Marcel Vadella estimated the distance separating him from the two brothers before the first shot at around 65cm. It's much more for Jaoide Fadil : during these reconstructions, it indicated a distance of approximately 2.25m.

Who, then, of the two men, comes closest to the truth? ? Here again, the experts' opinion is not unanimous. The second expert doctor – who also carried out Jamal Fadil's autopsy – sees several inconsistencies between the medico-legal reports of the injuries and Jaoide Fadil's statements. The position he indicates he had, he notes, does not correspond to that of his wounds. Conversely, Marcel Vadella's statements seem more plausible to him.

The gunshot residue expert also judges the defendant's statements to be compatible with the surveys carried out. For the latter, between 50cm and 1m maximum separated Jamal Fadil from the firearm, and no more than 2m as Jaoide Fadil assures.

Remains the professional in ballistics : he considers, conversely, that the version of the civil party is the most compatible with the sequence of shots recorded. “It is the angles of the shots and the impacts that tell you if the version is compatible or not ?“, asks the president of the Assize Court, Michel Bonifassi. Yes, confirms the expert.

However, “Would Mr. Vadella's version be more compatible in the event that Jamal Fadil had thrown himself at him? ?“, continues Me Camille Romani, counsel for the accused. Yes, again concedes the ballistics specialist.

Self-defense, premeditation ?

Can self-defense be invoked in this situation? ? Pleaded by the defense of the accused but refuted by the civil parties and the prosecution, this is one of the questions to which the jurors will be asked to answer. Faced with the second expert doctor, Me Camille Romani questions : “Does it appear from your work that this thesis can be completely excluded? ?” “No not at all, the doctor replies. But I don't have to comment on that.”

Finally, another central question : was there, in this case, premeditation ? Without commenting directly on this point, the ballistics expert recalls that the weapon used by Marcel Vadella to shoot the Fadil brothers is a 9mm semi-automatic pistol, recalls the expert. “So between each shot, you will have to release and re-activate the trigger“, he explains. The weapon, before the shots, was chambered, recalls the president, Michel Bonifassi.

A decision “extremely dangerous and not recommended“, indicates the ballistic expert. “From the moment a weapon is chambered, if a person does not do it on purpose and pulls the trigger, the shot will go off.“

The trial continues on Thursday, with the scheduled hearing, in particular, of Jaoide Fadil, civil party in this case. The verdict is expected on Friday. Marcel Vadella faces up to 30 years of criminal imprisonment.