Yvelines “Kalashnikov shooter” sentenced on appeal to 30 years in prison

Europe 1 with AFP 3:25 p.m., October 01, 2022

Malik Abadia, tried on appeal for murder and attempted murder against his ex-brother-in-law and two other people, was sentenced Friday by the Assize Court of Hauts-de-Seine to thirty years of criminal imprisonment, as in the first instance.

This sentence was accompanied by a security period of two-thirds, or twenty years.

As at first instance in 2021, this 39-year-old man was found guilty of having murdered his ex-girlfriend's brother in the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant in 2017 by shooting 11 times with a Kalashnikov in his direction, after a breakup from which he would not recover.

He had also been found guilty of injuring two other men with whom he had a dispute.

The three crimes were committed in May 2017 in Plaisir and Trappes (Yvelines) with the same weapon, never found.

"Prison closes against Malik Abadia, it's a reprieve for all those he hates"

Malik Abadia, who again claimed his innocence before the Assize Court of Hauts-de-Seine which had been judging him since Monday on appeal, had been identified at the scene of the assassination just before the shooting and recognized by one of the two injured .

"The civil parties have been heard, they are relieved by this verdict and will finally be able to mourn," reacted to AFP the lawyer for the civil parties, Me Louise Durin.

"I have no doubt that Malik Abadia is the man who, on three occasions, pulled the trigger while holding this Kalashnikov," Advocate General Pierre Kahn ruled on Friday, requesting life imprisonment.

"Prison closes against Malik Abadia, it's a reprieve for all those he hates, all those he hates, all those who are on his list", continued the magistrate, who judged the sentence requested "perfectly in tune with his gestures, his journey, his background, his escalation of violence which ended in the death of a person".

Fifteen convictions appear in the criminal record of the accused, described by witnesses and experts as an angry individual.

“It is not because he is violent that he is a killer”, had pleaded his lawyer, Me Sébastien Balzarini-Noachovitch, asking for the acquittal for the benefit of the doubt for his client.

The description by the witnesses of the fast food of the assassin with the Kalashnikov "does not correspond" to that of the accused, he estimated, hammering that there was "no objective element to designate Malik Abadia" as the author of the crime.