The lawyers of Mohamed Lamine Aberouz announced his appeal in cassation this Saturday, June 21. The man has continued to proclaim his innocence in this case.
The Paris Special Assize Court confirmed, this Saturday, June 21, on appeal, the conviction of Mohamed Lamine Aberouz to life imprisonment with a 22 -year -old security period for complicity in the assassination of a couple of police officers at their home in Magnanville (Yvelines) on June 13, 2016.
The Court recognized the 31-year-old Franco-Moroccan guilty of all the counts who aimed, complicity in the assassination of a person depositary of the public authority, complicity in sequestration of a minor under the age of 15 and association of terrorist criminals.
A cassation appeal
Standing in his box, Mohamed Lamine Aberouz accused the blow of reading the verdict, falling on his bench, overwhelmed. His lawyers, my Vincent Brengarth and Nino Arnaud, announced to AFP the appeal of their customer in cassation.
“There was in reality no room for maneuver. It was in anti -terrorist matters the doubt that benefits the accusation and not the accused. The jurisdiction made the decision to add a second man in a lonely action,” defense lawyers reacted.
The Court chaired by Frédérique Aline answered “yes” to the majority to the 17 questions establishing the guilt of Mohamed Lamine Aberouz.
“I assure you that I have no responsibility in your misfortune,” said Mohamed Lamine Aberouz in the morning, looking from since her box the members of the family of Jessica Schneider and Jean-Baptiste Salvaing, the two victims of Larossi Abballa.
“The one who led a jihad was Larossi Abballa. It was his fatal will. He did not consider me. I regret having attended him and having left me fooled,” added the accused. He reiterated his “firm and absolute condemnation” of the attack.
“At crime scene”
On the evening of June 13, 2016, Jessica Schneider, 36, police officer at the Mantes-la-Jolie police station, was slaughtered at her home in front of her three-year-old son. A little later, his companion, Jean-Baptiste Salvaing, 42, commander of the Mureaux police station, was stabbed with nine stab wounds when he was about to go home. The same assassin: Larossi Abballa, friend of the accused.
A follower of a rigorous Islam, already condemned in a jihadist attack file, Mohamed Lamine Aberouz has continued to proclaim his innocence in this case, saying that Larossi Abballa had acted alone.
For the lawyer general, the accused “was on the scene of the crime” on the evening of June 13, 2016 without possible dispute. Mohamed Lamine Aberouz is a “full member of the Islamic State”. “He acted as a jihadist,” she insisted. The “denials” of the accused “do not resist the file,” said Naïma Rudloff.
Trace ADN
“The course of the facts confirms that this could only be realized in the presence of a second man. Can we imagine a man, in broad daylight, attacking two potentially armed police officers?” She noted.
A single man could not have managed the reactions of the three-year-old child, by nature “unpredictable”, she continued.
He also needed an accomplice inside the home to report to Larossi Abballa the arrival of Jean-Baptiste Salvaing, underlined the magistrate.
Me Vincent Brengarth had pleaded the acquittal of his client for the benefit of doubt by highlighting the lack of “concrete elements” to support the “assumptions” of the accusation. “I have a conviction: the innocence of Mohamed Lamine Aberouz,” he said.
The main element against Mohamed Lamine Aberouz, “enemy” of France according to the lawyer for civil parties, Me Thibault de Montbrial, remains a DNA trace found on the right-tame of the personal computer of the police couple.
If the accusation maintains that it is a “primary contact DNA”, the defense affirms that it is “a transfer” of DNA provided to the scene by the assassin. Experts, cited at the helm, refused to decide between these two hypotheses.
“DNA is not the queen of evidence but an element of the puzzle which will make it possible to decide the innocence or the guilt of an individual”, summed up Olivier Pascal, general manager of the French institute of genetic imprints.
The magistrates of first instance had abounded in the sense of the accusation by affirming that “the hypothesis of a secondary transfer (should) be ruled out, the elements of the file establishing conversely a direct deposit of the DNA without mixture of Mohamed Lamine Aberouz” on the crime scene.
