Paris (AFP)
The public prosecutor requested five years' imprisonment on Tuesday, including three suspended sentences, against former Secretary of State Georges Tron during his appeal trial for rape and sexual assault before the Paris Assize Court.
Two former employees of the town of Draveil (Essonne) accuse the mayor LR of having imposed touching and digital penetrations on them between 2007 and 2010, generally during threesome scenes with his assistant to Culture at the time, Brigitte Gruel.
In the case of Georges Tron, the prosecution asked the court that the two years of sentence required not covered by the suspension be carried out under electronic bracelet.
She also requested a two-year suspended prison sentence against Ms. Gruel.
The defendants, who deny en bloc, had been acquitted at first instance.
In a two-and-a-half-hour indictment, Advocate General Jean-Christophe Muller tried to "unravel this tight interweaving which in this case is all at the same time mingling politics, morals and law".
He called on the court to condemn Georges Tron for rapes but not committed in a meeting, considering that Brigitte Gruel was guilty only of sexual assault in a meeting, and not of rape, on Virgine Ettel and Eva Loubrieu.
"It is not a fad to talk about influence, it is a reality, a modality of constraint," said Mr. Muller.
The existence or not of a situation of constraint between the 63-year-old politician and his two accusers is one of the keys to the case, which forced Georges Tron to resign from the Fillon government in 2011.
In 2018, although deeming the existence of sexual scenes credible, the Assize Court of Seine-Saint-Denis considered that there was however no coercion and therefore pronounced acquittals.
The defense pleads Tuesday afternoon and the verdict is expected Wednesday.
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