Before Lola, before Philippine and before Nicolas, there was Marie-Bélen Pisano, a young 21-year-old Franco-Argentinian woman, stabbed in the Marseille metro. The appeal trial of his alleged murderer is currently taking place in Nice.
As a reminder of the facts: On March 17, 2019, around 9 p.m., Marie-Bélen Pisano approached the Timone metro station on Boulevard Sakakini (5th). The young woman, an anthropology student, is preparing to join relatives to spend the evening. On the sidewalk, a young man speaks to him. The city’s surveillance cameras show Marie-Bélen looking for something in her bag. Then, she rushes into the metro via the escalators. The young man follows her and stabs her which punctures her lung. Despite rapid emergency services, she died an hour later.
Theft gone wrong?
Three months after the tragedy, investigators traced the case to a 17-year-old young man. Due to his minority, it is impossible to give his name. At the time, the media called him Yanis or Nassim. He is a Marseillais from the Belle-de-Mai district. At the time of the events, he was already under judicial supervision, following two convictions. Out of school, he divides his time between wandering and drug trafficking.
According to various witnesses, after stabbing Marie-Bélen, he stole her phone. In February 2023, he was tried before the Aix-en-Provence Assize Court for “theft preceded by violence resulting in death”. In front of the judges, he denies it outright. Anyone who is unable to explain the presence of their DNA on a victim’s sock is sentenced to the maximum penalty: 20 years of criminal imprisonment. The minority excuse is accepted.
For their part, Marie-Bélen Pisano’s family is half satisfied. Those close to him believe that the case is not a cell phone theft gone wrong. For them, it is a “feminicide”. During the trial, the victim’s mother declared: “It’s important that people know that she didn’t look for it, I expect this trial to make people realize that it happened to my daughter, but that it happens to many girls. » As one of her friends says, Marie-Bélen was “a passionate activist and a comrade committed to Latin American and French feminist struggles”. Before the courts, his people took up his fight.
-Femicide or social act?
They do not want the murder of Marie-Bélen to be considered a news item. Should it therefore only be the standard of the women’s cause? Marie-Bélen may have been killed because her murderer judged her to be weaker than a man, but recent news shows that the masculine gender protects nothing. Thomas, Philippe, Nicolas and others had this dramatic experience.
In a few years, cases like that of this student have multiplied. Everywhere on the territory, young and old are killed, raped, attacked… Valérie Boyer, LR senator for Bouches-du-Rhône deplores this to BV: “More violence, again the murder of a kid who had everything going for her. It’s unbearable. How long are we going to put up with this? The responsibility of the State must be engaged. » Some would say she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Are there any safe times and places left in France? Nothing is less certain! For the senator, it is now everywhere that“there is absolute anxiety among all French people, among all parents who are afraid when their children go out” because there are people in the streets who have no “no awareness of otherness”, for whom “the other does not exist”.
She returns to the matter: “I have been asking for years that these knife attacks be considered as social events and that they be studied. » She specifies: “I would like for these acts to be known who, how, the sex, the identity of the people. We need to know, because we will never be able to fight against this phenomenon if we don’t know how it happens, if we don’t know if women are attacked more than men…” Since 2017, statistics concerning this type of aggression have no longer been collected… A decision taken against the grain. For what ? Everyone is free to find the answer.
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