The Meurthe-et-Moselle Assize Court, in Nancy, will judge from this Monday until Thursday, two men accused of “arrest, kidnapping or arbitrary detention followed by death”, twenty-two years later the discovery of a corpse in a ditch.
On February 20, 2003, the body of Philippe Charuel, 29, was found badly beaten in the ditch of a departmental road in Gondreville, in Meurthe-et-Moselle.
Sentenced in their absence
The main suspects, aged 52 and 40, of Romanian nationality, were arrested on August 1 and 2, 2023 in the Catalan towns of Segur de Calafell and El Prat de Llobregat, near Barcelona. The two fugitives would be “involved in pimping”, according to the Spanish police. They had been living in Catalonia for around twenty years, under a false identity.
The two men had already been sentenced in absentia and in their absence in 2011 to thirty and twenty-six years in prison for their role in the death of Philippe Charuel. The latter, who was a sales executive looking for work at the time of the events, lived a few kilometers away, in Toul.
-He was described as “a man without fuss” who frequented nightclubs, recently separated from his wife and father of a young child. His car was found stained with blood in downtown Nancy.
All our articles on pimping
In this case, two young Romanian prostitutes declared that they had been bothered by Philippe Charuel, who was then taken into a car by two men, whom they said they did not know. The investigation showed that the two accused, an uncle and his nephew, were the pimps of the two women.
