Corruption trial in Fresnes: the former detention director "regrets" "serious" faults

Europe 1 with AFP 9:48 p.m., November 08, 2022

At the corruption trial at Fresnes prison (Val-de-Marne), in which four people including Arnaud Mimran appear, the former detention director regretted Tuesday before the Créteil criminal court "serious faults" but no criminal offences.

This head of division 3 of Fresnes, Khalid El Khal, 53, is being prosecuted for having received money in exchange for advantages granted to these prisoners.

He is on trial for passive corruption and criminal association for facts ranging from January 2016 to March 2018.

Telephones in the cell, fewer searches, more showers and visiting rooms... Three detainees, including two figures of the "carbon tax" scam, Arnaud Mimran and Fabrice Touil, are suspected of having benefited from a privileged detention regime thanks to the favors of this detention director of the wing where they were imprisoned.

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Asked by the court on Tuesday about having received 5,000 euros from Fabrice Touil on his release from prison, the official, who entered the prison administration in 1997, said he "deeply regrets" "serious faults" and "ethical errors".

“I did this job with humanity” 

"It's dirty and cursed money (...) I should not have agreed to take this money", he continued, however denying any criminal offense.

"When a detainee returns to detention, the objective is to reintegrate him, I did this job with humanity", underlines Khalid El Khal to whom the prosecution accuses a close proximity with detainees of the Jewish faith linked to "files with high financial stakes", such as the case of the carbon tax.

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On the question of extended visiting rooms, showers, "kosher parallel canteens", disciplinary procedures, the former detention director assured "having no power" or "legal authorization" on these missions.

At his side, three former prisoners of the Fresnes prison are considered "the corrupters".

Currently detained in the prison of Health, Arnaud Mimran, short black hair and beard of a few days, appeared for "active corruption" when he was imprisoned in Fresnes, in 2015 then again in 2016.

"In Fresnes, it's misery"

In his case, the official is suspected of having played a role in his transfer to Le Havre prison and of having granted him "favorable conditions of detention", such as being alone in the cell.

According to telephone tapping, the former trader boasted in particular to a relative of having favors from Mr. El Khal: "I brag, I am having fun with him, there is no nothing true, we are exaggerating, I did not benefit from any advantage", argued Tuesday Arnaud Mimran, relaxed and talkative in the box.

"In Fresnes, it's misery, we don't have a fridge, we don't drink water, it's dirty, there are rats everywhere, so we try to invent positive sides otherwise we falls into depression,” he insisted, denying any corruption.

Regarding his transfer to Le Havre prison, Arnaud Mimran said that this establishment "was not his first choice but the second".

"I just asked Mr. El Khal for details of my departure dates," he added.

13 years of imprisonment against Arnaud Mimran in June 2021

“At Health, I am alone, in Le Havre, in Fleury, in Nanterre too when it is overcrowded. It is the good thing to be detained in the media and it is not the fact of knowing Mr. El Khal “, he said, adding that he knew “little” the former director of detention.

Arnaud Mimran, sentenced in June 2021 to thirteen years in prison for his involvement in the kidnapping of a Swiss financier, was indicted in November 2021, suspected of having ordered a murder in April 2014.

Already sentenced in 2016 to eight years' imprisonment in the case of the "carbon tax", he was also indicted in the investigation into the assassination of his former father-in-law, the billionaire Claude Dray, in 2011 and on the 2010 murder of another carbon tax figure, Samy Souied.

Éric Robic, a French driver who ran over an Israeli in Tel Aviv in 2011 before fleeing, is also appearing, as well as a third detainee, Fabrice Touil, who was absent from the hearing.

The trial is to be held until Thursday.