During a march in tribute to Vanesa Campos, August 28, 2018 -

AFP

  • On August 16, 2018, Vanesa Campos, a 36-year-old transgender prostitute from Peru, was killed in the Bois de Boulogne.

  • The investigation quickly turned to a gang that robbed the clients of sex workers and created a climate of fear in the alleys of the woods. 

  • At the end of February 2021, the investigating judge ordered the referral to the assizes of nine men, three of whom are accused of the murder of Vanesa Campos in an organized gang.

A cry tears the dark night.

“Todas!

»« All », in Spanish.

A code invented by South American prostitutes in the Bois de Boulogne to signal a problem.

Suddenly, several detonations sounded near the Pré Catelan road.

It is 11:20 pm, this August 16, 2018, when the naked body of Vanesa Campos is found by her “compañeras”.

She was shot in the chest and stabbed.

This 36-year-old transgender woman, originally from Peru, is dying near a modest shelter, consisting of sheets stretched over the branches of a tree, where she discreetly received her clients.

His condition is desperate.

Despite the intervention of the emergency services, she succumbed to her injuries at 12:16 a.m.

The investigation, entrusted to the criminal brigade of the Paris judicial police, quickly identified several suspects.

Two and a half years after the facts, three of them were referred by the examining magistrate to the Assize Court where they will appear for murder in an organized gang.

Ali A., 24, and Karim I., 28, are accused of having stabbed the victim with a knife and baton.

Mahmoud K., born in 1997, for shooting him.

They incur life imprisonment.

"The facts are not clearly established concerning my client, he formally denies being the author of the shooting,"

his lawyer, Olivier Parleani

, told

20 Minutes 

.

All three were part of a gang that had for several months robbed the clients of sex workers in the sector.

A gun stolen from a policeman

This band, composed of men of Egyptian origin, caused a climate of terror to reign in the arteries of the woods.

To the point that frightened customers were becoming increasingly rare.

The leader of this gang, whom the girls nicknamed “El Nano” because of his small size, would be Karim I. Some told the police that he was miming threatening gestures, “as if he was going to cut our throats”, “ because they wouldn't let him steal from us ”.

To ensure their protection, they therefore hired a man nicknamed "Takaré" who was also threatened by the thieves.

"There was no one to defend these people before the commission of the facts, regrets Me Lorraine Questiaux, who represents the association Le Mouvement du Nid, which works for the" disappearance "of prostitution and has become a civil party.

“What emerges from the file is that they were destitute and that the police did not fulfill their mission by ensuring the safety and protection of these people.

"

Anonymous information quickly put the investigators of the judicial police on the trail of this group of thieves.

While listening to their telephone conversations, the police officers discover that they are concerned about a "thing" left in the Bois de Boulogne.

Is this the murder weapon?

While waiting to find out, the use of RATP surveillance cameras enabled the police to retrace their route on the evening of the events.

After meeting in a hookah bar at the Porte de la Chapelle, a dozen men rushed into the metro at 9.40 p.m. and left at 10:08 p.m. Porte Dauphine.

A little over an hour later, they were making the trip in the opposite direction.

In the following days, the police arrested several members of the gang.

Mahmoud K, he will be arrested in Germany after several months on the run.

In police custody, some end up acknowledging their participation in the facts and designate Mahmoud K. as the shooter.

It was, according to Karim I., only a "kind of show of force", intended to intimidate the protector of prostitutes.

The latter seems to be, with Mahmoud K., one of the instigators of this punitive expedition, which he denies.

Both in any case distributed to the participants weapons that they had previously hidden in the woods: knives, tear gas canisters, tasers, but also a firearm.

A Sig Sauer who had been stolen from a border police officer ten days before the murder of Vanesa Campos, when he had gone to the woods to have sex ...

"They are people like the others"

The weapon was finally found in May 2019. Several members of the group admitted that they had gone there to do battle with a "black".

But they swear they wouldn't have come to the meeting if they had known that one of them was carrying a gun.

In addition to the three accused discharged for murder, six suspects will appear for "criminal conspiracy to commit a crime".

A tenth suspect, a minor at the time of the facts, is sent back for theft to a children's court.

The trial could be held at the end of 2021 or the beginning of 2022. It will allow "to send a clear message", estimates Me Lorraine Questiaux.

“They are people like any other, we cannot lay hands on them, discriminate against them, or violate them with impunity.

"

The murder sparked a wave of emotion among sex workers and LGBT activists in Paris, who asked for the protection of the authorities during a demonstration organized at the end of August 2018. A year after the murder of Vanesa Campos, around fifty people

had gathered again in the Bois de Boulogne to pay him homage.

Born in Peru, she started working as a prostitute in Argentina in the mid-2000s because no employer wanted to hire a trans person.

Following the death of her father, in 2016, she left for France and lived in a small apartment at Porte de Clignancourt with three colleagues.

Described as a kind person with no bad intentions, she had stayed close to her family, to whom she regularly sent some money.

Society

Paris: Rally in tribute to Vanesa Campos, trans prostitute killed a year ago

Society

VIDEO.

Immersion with transgender sex workers in the Bois de Boulogne

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