Roanne: firm prison required for the perpetrators of violence against the alleged aggressor of a girl

David Montagné (in Roanne), with AFP 9:30 p.m., January 24, 2023, modified at 9:31 p.m., January 24, 2023

Sentences of up to 12 months in prison were requested on Tuesday in the Roanne Criminal Court against three people accused of beating last October a minor suspected of having sexually assaulted the daughter of one of them, 6 years old.

In a packed courtroom, the prosecutor of Roanne Abdelkrim Grini requested a sentence of 18 months in prison, including 6 to 9 months of probation against the father of the girl, who explained to the bar to have "farted a cable" , under "the blow of emotion", when he attacked the young man of 16 years.

A kind of "lynching" at 3 a.m.

The representative of the prosecution indicated that the four men - the father of the little girl and three neighbors - had organized on October 22 last around 3 a.m. a kind of "lynching", beating the teenager with the help of a stick and an electric cable.

The case had then reacted within the government and in the media, fueling debates on the right to take justice into your own hands.

The prosecutor also requested a one-year prison sentence, including six months suspended, for a neighbor, and two years in prison, including one suspended, for another in a state of recidivism.

A "relaxation for the benefit of the doubt" was required for the fourth.

>> READ ALSO

- "This is not the solution": in Roanne, residents are divided over the revenge of the girl's father

The girl's father, a 28-year-old delivery driver, is the only one to have recognized the violence.

The prosecutor accuses him of having put on the habit of a vigilante.

"We are not in the context of self-defense, with a response conditioned by the immediacy and proportionate to the aggression suffered by the child of this gentleman", he underlined.

"If it had happened at your home I would have applauded and I would even have accepted strong violence at the time", however conceded the prosecutor, while scolding the defendant for having "carried out identity checks and arrested people to photograph them in the streets of Roanne".

The girl's father "no longer controlled himself"

"This intervention to apprehend the young man was salutary. My client's degree of violence is certainly illegitimate, he recognizes it. But he was under unbearable pressure with a feeling of abandonment and he no longer controlled himself, "said pleaded for his part Me Anne-Laure Lebert, counsel for the father of the family.

"If we were in the context of a lynching, the injuries he inflicted would be of a different gravity", she added, considering that the firm prison required against her client is "unjustified in the context of 'human justice'.

In pre-trial detention after his indictment for sexual assault, the teenager did not attend the trial for security reasons.

The latter denies any aggression, while the girl's mother claims to have surprised at her home, on the night of Thursday 20 to Friday 21, a young man corresponding to his description.

A neighbor also recognized him as he was walking through the neighborhood that night.

Judgment was reserved for March 7.