The Seine-Saint-Denis Assize Court sentenced a man to ten years in prison on Tuesday March 5 for having robbed a young man at the exit of a techno festival in Paris in 2016, then fished out dead in the Canal de l' Ourcq, but did not accept responsibility for the death.
After five hours of deliberation, the court declared at the end of the evening Abdallah Miladi, 35, guilty of theft with violence against a vulnerable person - the victim having consumed a large quantity of ecstasy - but acquitted him of the count of violence having resulted in death.
The Bobigny prosecution had requested 18 years of criminal imprisonment.
Read alsoAn individual tried for having robbed and then killed a young man after a techno festival in Paris
“For the family, the conviction was essential but no sentence would have been heavy enough for the tragic loss of a child
,” reacted to AFP Me Dominique Laurier, lawyer for the family of Maxime Rendu.
On the night of December 17 to 18, 2016, the 23-year-old engineer disappeared after leaving a music festival organized in a hall on the edge of the Parc de la Villette, in the 19th arrondissement of Paris.
Two months later, in February, his body was discovered not far from there, in the territory of the town of Pantin.
In a state of decomposition, the corpse is fished out of the Ourcq canal, under the tracks of the ring road.
"At 23, like at 33, we can't imagine that we're going to die after an evening in Paris
," said Advocate General Alice Dubernet on Tuesday afternoon, in her indictment of this
"tragic bad encounter"
nocturnal.
Read alsoA mother finds her daughter in the crack camp of La Villette, in Paris
The very night of his disappearance, the victim's bank card was swallowed by a local ATM, after three bad codes during attempts to withdraw 120 euros.
Recovered by the investigators, a DNA present on the card leads them to Abdallah Miladi, a Tunisian undocumented known to justice under different aliases for multiple acts of violence in the district of La Villette - his
"hunting ground"
, according to Mr Laurier.
Questioned in the morning about the facts, the accused, shaved head and black quilted jacket, again denied the facts and delivered a confused version of that night in the Parc de la Villette:
“This guy, I have nothing to see, I did not push”
in the channel, he argued with anger.
According to his account, moving, he discovered the unconscious young man in a dark alley, walked with him to a bench on the Canal de l'Ourcq then went to withdraw money with the bank card at the request of its owner.
When he returned, the young man had disappeared.
“No, that evening he is not walking around like a Franciscan with his bottle of water to help drunk people in the Parc de la Villette!”
, mocked the Advocate General, slaying a
“liar”
.