“
They treated me worse than an animal
”: the trial of the lynching of a teenager, tortured for having dealt without authorization in a Marseille city, opened Thursday, November 10 before the assize court for minors of Aix-en-Provence (Bouches-du-Rhone).
A 20-year-old young man, who was 17 at the time of the events, is appearing for these facts qualified as kidnapping, sequestration with torture and acts of barbarism.
Four other defendants, who were adults, will be tried later.
On August 13, 2019, 16-year-old Mathieu – his first name has been changed – was taken to hospital in a semi-comatose state.
His body is covered with traces of blows, about forty wounds made with cigarettes and he suffers from very serious burns in the lower abdomen and upper thighs caused by a blowtorch.
Tied up on a chair
Hosted in a child welfare home in Chartres (Eure-et-Loir), Mathieu ran away to come to Marseille, yielding to the sirens of drug traffickers in constant search of labor.
As soon as he arrives, he is recruited to sell cocaine in the city of Micocouliers but he is immediately arrested by the police.
While waiting for him to be taken back to Chartres, a juvenile judge places him in a home in Marseilles.
He escapes, recovers the drug he hid at the foot of a tree in Hackberry before his arrest.
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He tries to “
freelance
” sell these few bars of hash in the Cité Félix-Pyat, another important point of sale in Marseille.
Denounced by a watchman from the network in place, he is sequestered in a disused room at the foot of a building for 24 hours.
Beaten with kicks, fists, iron bars, he is tied to a chair, completely naked, forced to snort cocaine.
"
Burnt the genitals
“
Two big guys burned my genitals.
I think it was a blowtorch because I was blindfolded.
I felt air and a big fire, I was screaming in pain
, ”he told the police as soon as he could be heard.
When he withdraws into himself due to the pain, blows from an iron bar make him straighten up.
Mathieu tries to kill himself by choking on the rag that his torturers slipped into his mouth at the same time as they blindfolded him.
His jailers want to know who sent him, who he works for.
“
They told me I was going to die
”.
Some "
little ones
", employees of his age in the Félix-Pyat network, rescue him and free him, advising him to run away.
“
They told me that the grown-ups wanted to kill me for fear that I would swing
,” Mathieu explained, adding before the examining magistrate: “
They treated me worse than an animal
”.
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On the photographic boards of Félix-Pyat's young traffickers, he identifies five men aged 17 to 26.
Only one of the defendants admits having given "
a big slap and kicks and punches
".
The others dispute the image of the accused who took place Thursday in the box of the prisoners of the court of assizes of the minors.
Fear and omerta
According to Mathieu, whose deposition is expected on Monday, this little lookout is one of those who hit him, adding: "
He made me hit [sniffer] coke in the cellar
".
Many people were passive witnesses of Mathieu's ordeal, including two "
Parisians
" - the name given to labor from other regions - who slept in the disused premises while the victim was tortured.
According to a resident whose deposition was collected under X, fear and omerta reigned in the city: “
Everyone knows it in Félix-Pyat that it is them.
Everybody.
But no one dares to say so
”.
The Marseille public prosecutor had warned last January against the trap of "
particularly violent
" drug traffickers who lured to Marseille children from all over France who were intoxicated by the myth of "
easy money
" and who found themselves "
in infernal situations
" that could be considered as trafficking in human beings.
The verdict is expected on Wednesday.
