A 22-year-old young man was sentenced Friday evening by the Assize Court of Val-d'Oise to twenty years of criminal imprisonment for the murder of a gay man in 2018 in Jouy-le-Moutier.

When the verdict was announced, Mohamed El Hajji, 18 at the time of the incident, remained silent, gazing fixed on the ground, like his attitude during the five days of the hearing.

The court did not accept the premeditation of the act, while the young man was being prosecuted for murder.

The alteration of discernment as well as the aggravating circumstance of the homosexual orientation of the victim were on the other hand retained.

In the morning, the lawyer general Chloé Audureau had requested against the accused twenty-five years of criminal imprisonment, accompanied by a two-thirds security sentence, qualifying his act of "will to annihilate, to destroy".

No criminal irresponsibility

The magistrate mentioned "eleven blows carried with a sharp object" and "a number of lesions difficult to quantify" found on the victim, a 55-year-old chief accountant who was bathed in a pool of blood in the pavilion where he had been living alone since his divorce in 2008. “At the material time, he (the accused) is not possessed as he says today, but very organized, rational,” said Chloé Audureau.

The day before, Mohamed El Hajji had said to have heard a "voice" which had "shouted" kill him it's a demon "" during the attack.

He admitted the assault, but denied having wanted to kill the victim, first met three weeks before via a dating site mainly used by the gay community.

Two of the psychiatrists and psychologists experts accepted a change in his judgment, without however concluding that he was criminally irresponsible.

"His place is not in a central house but in the middle of doctors who treat him", defended his lawyer, Me Nathalie Schmelck.

"Feeling of an instrumentalisation"

For the lawyer for the civil parties, Caty Richard, the “will to believe in madness” is part of a “defense strategy”.

“We all want to hang on to this.

Even for us, it could have been reassuring, ”she pleaded.

“What bothers us is that we have the feeling of being instrumentalized”.

In his plea, Me Richard referred to a "criminal trajectory" of the accused, also indicted for extortion and attempted murder in another case concerning the attacks of two gay men met on the same site.

"The company mourns the observation that all the advances for the normalization of the homosexual orientation are not enough to stop the rejection of homosexuality by some", lamented the general counsel.

Justice

A man tried for murder, suspected of having set a "trap" for a homosexual

Miscellaneous

Spanish government condemns violent assault on young gay man in Madrid

  • Murder

  • Lgbt

  • Justice

  • Homophobia

  • Pontoise