This Friday, at the end of his requisitions, Stéphane Javet, who occupies this week the headquarters of the Advocate General at the Assize Court of Meurthe-et-Moselle, claimed 24 and 30 years of criminal imprisonment against Cristian Rad and his uncle Vasile Ostas.
These two men, Romanian nationals today aged 40 and 52, had been arrested on August 1, 2023 in Catalonia, after a run of over 20 years. They lived under false identities and had redone their lives, with companions and children.
Struck
Rad and Ostas are tried for the kidnapping followed by the death of Philippe Charuel, 29, whose body was found in the early morning of February 20, 2003 on the edge of the RD400, in Gondreville, in the suburbs of Nancy. This offense is liable to life imprisonment.
Philippe Charge, father of a two and a half year old daughter and in the process of divorce, had been struck to death, with punches and foot, by Rad and Ostas, presented by the accusation as pimps. Some witnesses had mentioned the presence of a Japanese baton or saber.
The first violence had intervened in front of Nancy station, where the victim had attacked two prostitutes, had continued in the parking lot and in the local garbage cans of the Formula 1 hotel, on the heights of Laxou. Philippe Charuel was then loaded in the trunk of a car and balanced in a ditch in Gondreville.
-“Party with the image of a face in porridge”
“The abduction followed by the death of the victim reminds us with force and brutality how fragile life is and must be preserved,” said Stéphane Javet at the start of his requisitions. “We will never know if Philippe Charuel was still alive before being deposited in Gondreville. The two accused say it. And if everyone takes the exclusivity of the idea of transporting the victim to the hospital, all of this is never just a smoke screen! If they had really had this intention, they would have found it, this hospital! ».
Previously, Me Sophie Godfrin-Ruiz, lawyer for relatives, had stressed that the family “has been waiting for an answer for 22 years”. The black dress had pointed out that the victim’s father died in 2017, without having seen the faces of those who took off his son’s life, that he had “left with the image of a porridge face”.
Defense pleadings have just started. In 2011, tried in absentia, Vasile Ostas and Cristian Rad had respectively sentenced to 30 and 26 years’ imprisonment. Verdict in the evening.
