By RFIPosted on 10-22-2019Modified on 22-10-2019 at 00:27

This former minister of justice of Burundi, former high official of Unesco, and his wife were condemned Monday, October 21 by the 17th room of the court of Nanterre to two years in prison suspended for having operated for ten years a compatriot , Sindigaya Method, at their home in the Paris region.

For the court, the spouses Mpozagara have in particular subjected their victim to forced labor and to conditions of accommodation contrary to dignity: two elements constituting the trafficking of human being. In addition to the two-year suspended sentence, they were sentenced to pay 70,000 euros in damages to Sindayigaya Method.

His lawyer Reynaud is satisfied. " The message for me is clear that whatever your status is, there is no impunity for facts like these. So it's a suspended prison sentence. I believe that the sentence was adapted to the personality of the defendants, who are elderly people and who, in any case, obviously would not have been serving a prison sentence. The important thing for us was the principle of condemnation, that Method be recognized in its status as a victim of human trafficking and an obligation to compensate . "

In 2007, the couple was sentenced for similar offenses involving two nieces before being released. The young women had then appealed to the European Court of Human Rights, which had punished France for the weakness of its laws against servitude and forced labor.

And it is on the basis of this new strengthened legislation on trafficking that the Mpozagara spouses were sentenced yesterday. To the regret of the lawyer of the former minister, Master Naveau-Duschene. " I have been in this file for twenty years; So I had other cases with Mr. Mpozagara where they were relaxed, things were restored, well it will be the same thing. I know these people, I know especially my client, I know he is a man of integrity. "

According to the lawyer, the couple will therefore appeal.

Lastly, the Mpozagara spouses were also fined more than 52,000 euros for the Urssaf (Union for the recovery of social security contributions and family allowances).

    On the same subject

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