More than thirty years after the murder of Ghislaine Marchal in 1991 in Mougins, justice examines Thursday, November 24 behind closed doors a new request for revision of the Moroccan gardener convicted for this crime and then partially pardoned, Omar Raddad.
Read alsoOmar Raddad's case reexamined by justice
The examination of the admissibility of this request, filed in June, will take place during a non-public hearing, which must begin Thursday at 2 p.m. before the investigating committee of the Court of Revision.
Omar Raddad, now 59, will be present at the Paris courthouse on Thursday but will not make a statement, his lawyer Sylvie Noachovitch told AFP.
The decision of the investigating committee, made up of five magistrates, will then be deliberated for several weeks, according to a judicial source.
This first examination is only one step towards a possible revision of the trial, an extremely rare event in France.
New genetic fingerprints
The investigating committee can either reject the request, or order additional information, or send it to the Court of Revision, which will then have the final say on the organization of a new trial. This request for review, in one of the most famous and controversial criminal cases in France, is based on the report in 2019 of an expert who carried out new analyzes of DNA traces discovered in 2015 on seals and who did not not owned by Omar Raddad.
These new genetic fingerprints correspond to four men, two perfectly exploitable fingerprints and two others partially, found on two doors and a rafter of the cellar in which the body of Ghislaine Marchal, a rich widow of 65, was discovered on June 24, 1991. On these two doors was written "
Omar killed me
" (sic) and "
Omar was
" in letters of blood.
Read alsoOmar Raddad case: new episode under the sign of DNA
For the defense of Omar Raddad, whose first request for revision was rejected in 2002, "
these new elements represent real hope
".
Me Noachovitch is said to be "
convinced that they are an upheaval of the file and obviously give rise to a doubt on the guilt of Omar Raddad
".
Sentenced in 1994 to 18 years imprisonment, without the possibility of appealing at the time, Omar Raddad had benefited from a partial pardon from President Jacques Chirac, then from parole in 1998. This pardon does not constitute cancellation of the condemnation and does not make him innocent.