After seven hours of deliberation, on February 2, 1994, the Alpes-Maritimes Assize Court found her Moroccan employee, Omar Raddad, guilty of the murder of Ghislaine Marchal.
With mitigating circumstances, he was sentenced to 18 years of criminal imprisonment.
“The emotion is strong
,” noted that day the legal columnist of Le
Figaro
, Pierre Bois.
The words drawn from the victim's blood
"Omar killed me"
, the thesis of a judicial error ardently defended by the famous lawyer Jacques Vergès and the writer Jean-Marie-Rouard, the accusations of racism relating to the investigation , the file concentrates all the ingredients of a resounding affair.
It will be, with multiple twists and turns, until the rejection in October 2022 of the request for review filed by the lawyers of the unfortunate gardener.
Article published in Le Figaro on February 3, 1994
Guilty.
The Alpes-Maritimes Assize Court yesterday afternoon sentenced Omar Raddad, 31, to 18 years of criminal imprisonment for the murder of Ghislaine Marchal, killed on June 23, 1991 in her villa in Mougins.
After nearly seven hours of deliberation, the court found him guilty of this murder but granted him mitigating circumstances.
This conviction triggered a violent reaction from his wife, and strong emotion in the very large crowd in the palace hall.
Mr. Vergès declared that he would continue
“to fight against racism”
.
The lawyer specified that he would file an appeal before the Supreme Court.
On the one hand the most terrible accusation of a victim, one whose authenticity cannot be doubted, if only because it was written on the verge of death;
on the other hand an equally absolute absence of evidence making Omar Raddad guilty.
It was this dilemma that faced the jury of the AlpesMaritimes conference (five women and four middle-aged men) after long days of debate which did not allow for further research. of the truth.
It was therefore the intimate conviction of each person which prevailed at the time of the verdict.
An intimate conviction which had to take into account both the very heavy presumptions which had accumulated by examining the behavior of the Moroccan gardener on the day of the crime, but also the flaws of the police investigation which never succeeded in substantiating this that she suspected.
So who to believe in the end?
The Advocate General Bernard Farret who had not requested the maximum sentence at the end of his indictment and who instead suggested a compromised sanction of seventeen to twenty years of imprisonment, Me Henri Leclerc, civil party, who saw in this drama the shipwreck of a man, but above all the atrocious tragedy of a victim who in no way deserved to be tarnished later by gossip, or Me Vergès, speaking last, who assured that everything was possible, that there was a second man, much more Machiavellian than Omar, who would have killed Ms. Marchal and who would have used her blood to make the Moroccan a
“scapegoat”
, thus designating him
“with the lynch instinct which is in us
.
Evening of idleness
Or, just trust these two white panels erected like livid specters, in the middle of the court, where Ghislaine Marchai wrote
“Omar killed me... Omar killed me...”
At the level of the certainties which Me Henri Lecierc used skillfully, it was established that Omar Raddad, formerly self-effacing, so discreet, had changed radically from the moment he had known the game, from the first evening of idleness when he had timidly entered this poor man's casino where the slot machines were lined up.
From then on Omar, fascinated, had lived only for this, becoming emboldened to ask his employers for advance advances, throwing away his savings, selling one of his wife's jewels, harassing his bosses until one of them They, by perhaps dismissing him, trigger an attack of uncontrollable rage.
The door on which Ghislaine Marchal would have designated her assassin.
Eric Gaillard
This scenario could have been the subject of a strong pleading by Mr. Vergès telling us the edifying life of a poor Moroccan crushed by modern games.
But Mr. Vergès, who knows that confession rarely pays off, remained in the line of denial of his client, even if he pleaded below his usual provocative tone, embarrassed by the presence of Mr. Leclerc and especially by that of the president of the Grandrut bar, brother-in-law of the victim, whose reputation for moderation and seriousness is well established at the Paris bar.
False Memoirs of Hitler
It is therefore a Vergès who has once again become classic and courteous for the occasion, allowing himself only an ironic remark regarding the
“two-headed”
accusation formed by Me Leclerc and the attorney general, who endeavored to demonstrate everything that had been obscured by the police investigation.
The lawyer began, as is often the case, by discrediting the handwriting experts.
In a more biting register, he declared:
“Graphologists should be excluded from the courts in the same way as fortune tellers.
Let us remember that this year is the hundredth anniversary of a masterful miscarriage of justice.
Captain
Dreyfus
was also accused.
Not by just anyone.
By
Bertill
on who is still authoritative.
Let us remember
Hitler's false Memoirs
, the
Vologne affair
where a foreman died because of his foreman's writing.
“The handwriting,” Mr. Vergès asserted peremptorily, “is not that of Madame Marchal. It is that of a man who imitated the graphics. But who is this man, you say?
On this point where he obviously feels weaker, the lawyer this time gets away with a casual formula:
"Who ? That's not my role. I am not an American lawyer. I don't hire a detective. I am not responsible if the police have not completed their task, I am not a gendarmerie officer.”
Courage of the heart
Mr. Vergès has been speaking for more than two hours and the conclusion is approaching:
“It is true
,” he said, looking at the president of the Grandrut,
“that during this trial I learned to respect the civil parties in their misfortune.
A human being, said Shakespeare, is like a leaf that must be crushed to appreciate its smell... But does Madame Marchal need a smuggling culprit?
Isn't it insulting him to propose a cobbled together thesis?
You cannot condemn someone for nothing, have the courage of heart, the civic courage to simply say no.
Acquitting Omar would honor France.”
Omar Raddad asks to speak.
He who had, from the first day, made the mistake of only wanting to express himself in Arabic, through an interpreter, kept some sentences which he pronounced for the end in French.
He said in a neutral voice, without aggression:
“It was not me who killed Madame Marchal.
Ms. Marchal was a good person.
She did me a lot of good.”
He repeats:
“It was not me who killed Madame Marchal.”
Until the end, Omar Raddad remained a stranger to his story.
By calculation or because he accepted its inevitability.
But it is true that history, written in letters of blood by the dying Ghislaine Marchal, had already caught up with him.