Small beard, navy sweater on a white shirt, Saad Lamjarred listens carefully to the president of the assize court recalling the facts with which he is accused.
"Are you still arguing?"
, asks Judge Frédérique Aline.
Saad Lamjarred confirms.
"I've waited for this moment for almost seven years, to say whatever you want to hear about this case that has hurt me and my loved ones a lot,
" he said, speaking in Arabic or English. via an interpreter, sometimes in French which he has less command of.
On the other side of the small courtroom, Laura P., dark suit, chestnut hair loose on the shoulders, looks away as soon as he speaks.
When she saw him arriving, she had a fit of tears.
The facts she denounces date back to October 2016. Aged 20, she had accompanied Saad Lamjarred to his hotel on the Champs-Élysées after an evening loaded with alcohol and cocaine.
They had kissed but when he became more enterprising, she tried to stop him, she told investigators.
He then allegedly beat and raped her.
The court begins by taking an interest in the life course of Saad Lamjarred, 37 years old today.
Patient, polite - he begins all his answers with "Madame la president" - the singer, adored in Morocco and known throughout the Arab world, traces his happy childhood in a family of artists respected in his country - his singer father very popular, his actress mother.
At 16, he left to continue his education in the United States but quickly dropped out of school.
“I followed my dreams”
(
“I followed my dreams”
), he justifies.
He does odd jobs, hoping to break into music.
"A problem"
He started to make himself known in 2007 by participating in a Lebanese telecrochet before becoming famous around 2015 - his clips accumulate hundreds of millions of views on Youtube.
"I take advantage of my celebrity to convey positive things to people, all in a spirit of respect, of great respect for women
," he said spontaneously to the court.
“But in recent years with this story …
, blows the pop star,
I have experienced great stress, a great depression”
.
The court wants to know more about the
"values"
he conveys in his songs.
"I want to show the culture of my country, the modern and free Moroccan woman"
, he answers, evoking the beauty, the intelligence of the Arab woman and her
"complementarity of the man".
On other subjects, he is much less verbose.
"Why did you leave the United States in 2010?"
, asks the president innocently.
"I had a problem, I decided to go back"
, sweeps Saad Lamjarred, whose face is closed.
"I do not want to talk about this case,"
he retorts when the president insists.
For this trial hangs over the shadow of embarrassing and similar accusations of rape of other young women, even if Saad Lamjarred's criminal record remains empty.
He was charged with rape in New York in 2010 but the charges were dropped after a financial settlement with the victim.
A Franco-Moroccan accused him of rape in Casablanca in 2015 before withdrawing from the procedure, citing heavy family pressure, and a dismissal had been ordered.
He was finally indicted for rape in Saint-Tropez, in 2018.
When the accusation returns to the charge on the New York case, one of the singer's lawyers, Me Jean-Marc Fedida, gets up and gets carried away: "
If you intend to bring trials that don't did not take place, we are not going to get along!”
, he shouts
The court will not have more luck with the singer's wife, who evades questions about the previous charges.
"I know he's innocent, he's my husband, I know him
," she says.
The trial is scheduled until Friday.