Medicine at the heart of the trial.
Since this Monday morning and for two days, practitioners and experts have taken the helm of the Assize Court of Val-d'Oise to allow him to judge Mohamed F. This young man of 24, arrived from Iraq in 2010, is accused of having caused the death of a baby by shaking it in Arnouville (Val-d'Oise), in 2018. Little Ilyes was 5 and a half months old at the time of the facts.
He died two months later.
“I did it like that…” The video scrolls across the screens of the courtroom.
Filmed during the investigation, Mohamed F. performs on a doll the gestures he indicates to have done on little Ilyes.
He takes the doll, throws it in the air several times, without violence, explaining that he threw the child "a meter away".
It refers to the height of the child's head.
He specifies that he stuck to this level of intensity.
He mimics a stronger gesture: “I didn't do that.
The accused also shows how he turned the child lying on the bed around by manipulating him by the legs.
Again without brutality.
For the expert, the diagnosis of the shaken baby "highly probable" ...
“The gesture as we see it on the video is not possible.
Throwing a child in the air does not generate this type of lesion ”affirms, categorically, the forensic expert at the helm.
She recalls that the child presented an acute subdural hematoma produced by the rupture of bridge veins in the brain and deep retinal hemorrhages.
All that reveals, according to her and according to the High Authority of Health (HAS), the shaking of the baby.
“To explain these lesions, the head must tilt violently back and forth.
Just throwing a child in the air generates a subdural hematoma only if the gesture is intense, repeated and abrupt.
It has to be violent for the brain to move in the cranial box and tear off the bridge veins, ”she adds.
In any case, for the expert, the diagnosis of the shaken baby "is highly probable, even certain".
She adds, “When the person has made the shaking gesture, they know it.
Does she understand the meaning?
This is another thing.
"
... But for a professor of neurology, it was "an accident"
The defense sought to question the certainties of the expert by putting forward the hypothesis of a cerebral anomaly in the child.
For her, Ilyes' cranial perimeter presented an abnormal development, a sign of macrocephaly.
This pathology would promote the phenomenon of shearing of the bridge veins.
The two lawyers, Me Julie Maire and Me Mehdi Bouzaida have thus produced an email from Professor Bernard Echenne, author of the book "The Shaken Baby Syndrome", which calls into question the reliability of the diagnosis of the shaken baby as recommended by the HAS.
A procedure is on this subject opened before the Council of State.
The professor of neurology explains to have taken knowledge of the curves of growth of the baby, thus speaks about "favorable ground" and "of accident", evoking "an aggravating circumstance".
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A point of view immediately contested by the forensic pathologist at the helm, believing that there is nothing abnormal in the curve: “It would not cause the bleeding that we observed in Ilyes.
They are too important.
The president pointed out that Professor Echenne also admitted that there had been a shaking in the case of Ilyes.
"A very emotional, anxious young man"
The young accused must explain his actions on Wednesday.
In front of him, the mother, civil party in the file.
They had met via social networks, had together a first child before separating.
They met while the mother was expecting little Ilyes from another father.
“I felt they wanted to be parents.
They were young.
They formed a real couple, a family unit, ”recalls Necker's social worker in court.
She also remembers a young man "very emotional, anxious, who blamed himself."
