Five days after his arrest, in the early morning in his partner's apartment, in Dijon (Côte-d'Or), Mohammed C. was indicted this Monday by an investigating judge from the cold-case division of the court of Nanterre, for the murders of Nathalie Boyer and Laïla Afif. These two cases belong to the so-called “disappeared from Isère” file taken up since 2022 by this center specializing in unsolved cases.
Mohammed C. was confused by DNA traces found on various objects linked to the crime scene concerning Laïla Afif. The 63-year-old retiree with sallow complexion and white hair was presented on Friday, at the end of his police custody, to a liberty and detention judge who notified him of his continued imprisonment while awaiting the arrest warrant. brought issued by the investigating judge. This Monday, the former Renault worker was transported to Nanterre (Hauts-de-Seine), where he was heard by the investigating magistrate at midday.
“He is upset”
“The charges against him are completely disputed. He is upset. Justice comes to get him and tells him about very old facts. He is also upset by the detention,” his lawyers, Me Émilie Boyé and Pierre-Vincent Connault, of the Dijon bar, told Le Parisien. His partner, with whom he had lived for five years, “totally supports him”, they specify.
This double indictment marks a giant leap in the investigation into the murder of Nathalie Boyer, a 15-year-old schoolgirl found with her throat slit in 1988, and that of Laïla Afif, a mother shot dead on May 12, 2000 in the small town of La Verpillière. According to the latter's daughter, Dounia, interviewed on Sunday by the daily Ouest-France, the victim “knew the suspect”. And to specify, in the columns of the regional daily: “I know this family very well. We are friends. They are devastated to hear the news.”
In Dijon, according to our information, Mohammed C. had been leading the ordinary life of a pre-retiree for at least five years, in the Grésilles district where he was seen every day walking his Yorkie, or going for a ride on his electric bike. The sixty-year-old, at the RSA for several years, lived in his partner's apartment. A seemingly peaceful existence, only troubled by a reputation as a “runner” which stuck to his skin.
According to a resident of Grésilles, met the day after his arrest, Mohammed C., before meeting his partner, “spent long days sitting in his white van in the corner of the laundromat. He looked like he was waiting for someone. We women had spotted it. He scared me a little,” she confided to us. A testimony close to that of Dounia, who describes in Ouest-France Mohammed C. as “a predator” who “drove around the city by car. »
Nathalie Boyer, a teenager from Reunion Island, disappeared on August 2, 1988 at the end of the day, in Villefontaine, not far from the home of Mohammed C., already established in the region at the time of the events. The schoolgirl, who lived in a hostel, was visiting her mother and never reappeared. In both cases, the victims appear to have been picked up by their murderer at a bus shelter.
Indicted for these two murders, Mohammed C., who remains presumed innocent, “firmly” denies the facts with which he is accused, according to his lawyers. The judge of freedoms and detention ordered him to remain in pre-trial detention.
