A 45-year-old man found guilty of strangling his wife at their home in Saint-Etienne, in front of three of their children, was sentenced on Friday to twenty years of criminal imprisonment, accompanied by a security sentence of the two- third, by the Loire Assize Court.
The jurors followed the requisitions of the Advocate General, Mickaël Guillaumin, against Hocine Mebarkia, to whom the Assize Court also issued an injunction for care under penalty of five additional years of imprisonment.
The accused himself called the police on August 5, 2017, claiming that he had just discovered his wife dead in her bed, returning from an errand at the tobacco shop.
During the trial, he continued to deny being the one who strangled this 35-year-old Algerian woman whom he had married in her country of origin, in 1998, as part of a marriage "arranged by our families", according to the report. 'accused and with whom he had four children.
The victim lived as a recluse
Three of them, minors, present in the family apartment on the day of the tragedy, were civil parties through the association Enfance et Partage.
In defense, Me François Paquet, whom his client had challenged at the opening of the trial Thursday morning before changing his mind a few hours later, considered that the accused had suffered a "change of judgment".
It is based in particular on the conclusions of "a psychiatrist who considers it highly pathological".
The victim had joined her husband in France in 2013. She lived in recluse, without telephone or bank account, still veiled, on the seventh floor of their apartment building, seeing "in hiding her only friend", testified the latter.
Her husband refused to let her learn French and prevented her from returning to see his family in Algeria, as he did himself.
Justice
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Miscellaneous
The two suspects of a double murder in Haute-Vienne, including a feminicide, imprisoned
Trial
Feminicide
Saint Etienne
Justice
Assize Court