The Assize Court of Hérault, in Montpellier -

Jérôme Diesnis / Agence Maxele Presse

  • Sofiane and Edouard were found on a sidewalk with their body covered with wounds in March 2016. The first did not survive his injuries.

  • A gang had suspected them of having stolen 15,000 euros linked to drug trafficking.

    The money had been stolen from a house a few days after they found out about it.

  • Five people imprisoned for five years are being prosecuted before the popular jury.

    They come from the city of Minguettes in Vénissieux.

    Investigators suspect them of being the owners of the pickup and the stolen money and of having organized a punitive expedition to find them.

He had been found abandoned in a street near the Clémentville clinic in Montpellier, partly undressed, his body covered with bruises and bruises, signs of the ordeal he had just suffered.

Sofiane, 17 and a half, did not survive his injuries.

He passed away on March 30, 2016. His friend Edouard managed to survive this hell.

But he has since had to rebuild himself.

Five people appear before the assizes of the Hérault since Monday for this outburst of fatal violence.

Four men imprisoned since April 2016 and a woman, placed since that same date under judicial supervision.

She is being prosecuted for failing to assist a person in danger.

Drugs and money stolen from a dealer or his nanny

The previous Saturday, Sofiane and Edouard had participated in an evening in Capestang, a town near Béziers.

A relative of the owner, absent that evening, had shown them a cache in which were 15,000 euros and drugs.

However, this money had disappeared a few days later and suspicion quickly fell on the two friends.

From the sensitive city of Minguettes in Vénissieux, four people, some very unfavorably known to the courts - including probably the owner of this money - are suspected of having organized a punitive expedition in order to recover their property.

The suspicions were initially directed towards Nicolas, another young person, beaten and tortured in a cellar of Devèze in Béziers.

Then towards Sofiane and Edouard, mutilated on a vacant lot.

All three were ultimately strangers to this theft.

"A gang of barbarians"

“On reading the file and the forensic expertise, we are overwhelmed by Sofiane's suffering in the face of what we can call a gang of barbarians,” said Luc Abratkiewicz, lawyer for the mother and for the daughter of Sofiane.

“ 

I don't know if I would be able to hear what they did to my brother.

Am I able to live behind knowing what they did to her?

I don't know… ”, explains to France Bleu Hérault, Hourya, the victim's sister.

The verdict of the popular jury is due on March 16.

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  • Languedoc-Roussillon

  • Assize court

  • Torture

  • Montpellier

  • Justice