The criminal court declared itself incompetent on Friday, August 28 to try two 18-year-old men, suspected of having violently assaulted a young Jewish man and of having stolen his watch in early August in Paris, after a procedural hiccup. This decision was taken in extremis, following a dramatic turn at the hearing. The two men were initially referred for immediate appearance - a quick procedure - and the trial proceeded normally on Friday afternoon, until the prosecutor's requisitions.
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The latter first asked for heavy sentences of 3 and 4 years firm with revocation of " at least two years " of reprieve. But he then got up during the defense argument and he reconsidered his indictment, explaining that the defendants risked 15 years in prison and that the court was therefore incompetent to judge these criminal facts - which fall under a court of law. 'seated. " The court cannot judge you this evening ", confirmed a little later the president of the court while addressing the defendants, referring the case to the public prosecutor's office and issuing a warrant of committal until the same evening at midnight.
The two men, Parisians who have just reached the age of majority living in the east of the capital, appeared for theft with violence resulting in total incapacity for work (ITT) for more than 8 days, committed in a meeting and because of the membership of the victim to a religion.
Suspects already convicted
The victim, a father, told the bar to have been followed, on August 6, in the entrance hall of his parents' building by two people, who took the elevator with him. On the landing, he reported having been " strangled ", having received " punches ", and having been insulted as " dirty Jew, dirty son of a bitch, you're a dead man, dirty race ". According to his account, he was then pushed down the stairs and then lost consciousness, having his watch worth 10,000 euros stolen. It was his father who, worried not to see him arrive, discovered him inanimate. He was prescribed 10 days of ITT.
The police have found the trace of the two defendants, arrested at the end of August, using the images of the CCTV cameras of the district. In the box, the latter recognized the theft but not all of the blows, and above all denied the anti-Semitic insults: they claimed to have seen the watch on the victim's arm, but not the kippah he was wearing. The two men were sentenced in January 2020 to 5 years in prison including 3 years suspended for complicity in murder and aggravated violence in particular, in a file dating from 2018. One of them also has two other convictions of suspended prison sentence.