Not sure that the inhabitants of Oudon (Loire-Atlantique) will soon see their former general practitioner again.
Doctor Issam Abdel Halim, 65, has returned to live in Damascus, Syria, and if he returns to France, he will be arrested.
He was sentenced this Monday, June 14, 2021 to one year in prison by the Nantes Criminal Court for the "usual violence" he had inflicted on his wife between 2014 and 2020. The Nantes judges also issued a warrant of arrest. stop against him.
As early as 2019, the gendarmes had been alerted by neighbors of the Halim family who heard the calls for help from the doctor's 25-year-old daughter.
By investigating, the gendarmes learned that his wife's family was staying in Damascus at her expense.
"We therefore knew from the start that he had a means of pressure and blackmail," explained the public prosecutor at the hearing Monday evening.
The prosecution's surgical procedure should therefore not cause more damage than what it intended to treat: if the legal action was initiated too early, there was a risk of endangering people in Syria.
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An "arranged" but not "forced" marriage
The couple had met in Syria more than twenty years ago and had carried out an "arranged" and not "forced" marriage, underlined the wife of the defendant.
“The homes of my parents and my sister were destroyed by the Syrian regime's bombings during the civil war,” she also explained.
They had to be housed while they built new ones.
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See also Domestic violence: an internal note asks the police to better follow up cases
"My client has suffered the full spectrum of domestic violence, whether sexual or economic," summarized her lawyer, Me Anne Bouillon. The investigation had made it possible to establish the "oppressive or even tyrannical behavior" of the "good doctor" of Oudon, gritted the prosecutor. He was opposed, for example, to his wife exercising a professional activity as an interpreter and accused her of "behaving like a prostitute". Placed under judicial control on October 13, 2020, Dr Issam Abdel Halim had immediately braved him by taking refuge in Syria.
The doctor was therefore not present at his trial, this Monday, "because of the Covid", according to his lawyer Me Marie-Pierre Jouan, without knowing if he was ill or if the closing of the borders complicated his return. “I have not seen the slightest PCR test in the file! », The public prosecutor got carried away. The arrest warrant was therefore necessary, according to him. "Can you imagine the humiliation? He, the good doctor, was tried and sentenced, the prosecutor insisted. There is therefore a great risk that he will return to France for revenge. "
