By RFIPalled on 08-09-2019Modified on 08-09-2019 at 23:28
This Monday, September 8, begins before the tribunal de grande instance of Nanterre the trial of Gabriel Mpozagara, former minister and diplomat, as well as his wife, accused of reducing a compatriot in domestic slavery for a decade.
While he thought he would come to France for a few months to look after a disabled son of the Mpozagara couple, Méthode claims to have been enslaved for 10 years in the couple's villa, in the south-west suburbs of Paris. Exploited, he says, 19h on 24h, his passport confiscated, malnourished ...
He was finally released in July 2018 when a construction worker reported to the police that a man with signs of abuse was sleeping on a makeshift bed in the basement. Accused of "trafficking in human beings", the Mpozagara spouses, incur 7 years in prison and 150 000 euros fine. The couple denies the facts. Yet he had already been implicated in a similar case.
In 2007, husband and wife were sentenced for having, for several years, kept two young relatives brought from Burundi " in conditions of work and accommodation contrary to human dignity ", before being released on appeal.
Accompanied by the committee against modern slavery, the two young women had then brought the case before the European Court of Human Rights, which condemned France in 2012 for not having put in place a legislative framework allowing effectively combat bondage and forced labor.
The following year, France therefore amended its penal code to introduce these concepts and revise the article on trafficking in human beings, article on the basis of which the couple compared precisely today.
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