Convicted of eliminating his mentor in banditry, Charles Ravet, 35, former semi-professional footballer in Switzerland, was sentenced this Friday to twenty years in prison by the Assize Court of Lyon. The court did not accept the theory of fatal blows without intent to cause death, advanced by the former sportsman.
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Everything happened as you organized it, "explained the president of the court Raphaël Vincent at the time of pronouncing the verdict. During his trial, Charles Ravet admitted to killing Julien Lorini, described by the prosecution as "one of the main drug traffickers" in the Lyon environment. But the accused assures that he did not "want it". "If I could change things, I would," he said before the proceedings closed, apologizing to the family.
"A fight gone wrong"
Over the course of the hearing, he described a fight that went wrong. He also admitted to having thrown his body into Lake Geneva, after having vainly tried to bury it in a forest near the Lyon region, "in panic".
He transported the corpse, wrapped in a down, in the trunk of his car parked for two days in an underground car park near Geneva, before buying a canoe. On Lake Geneva, he rowed for more than an hour from a canal he knew. The body was never found. In the morning on Friday, the Advocate General; Eric Mazaud had requested 25 years in prison, believing that the crime was premeditated "for a long time, several months before probably".
By choosing to make an appointment in the cellar of his parents, in Villeurbanne, Charles Ravet was "in known territory", pointed out Eric Mazaud, who insisted on the most compromising elements: the purchase of a sleeping bag and a baseball bat, two hours before the crime.
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'Black anger'
According to the prosecution, Charles Ravet, involved in an ongoing go-fast case, resumed drug trafficking after the murder. "He is without remorse, without guilt, without empathy. It is clinical, it is cold, "described Eric Mazaud. For his part, the former football player maintained that his relationship with Julien Lorini, who claimed a drug debt, had become hellish.
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He goes into a black rage, he grabs me by the neck. That's where the fight breaks out," he said. "If I feel attacked, I type, I've always been like that." "My life was played out here, or the life of one of my relatives," the accused justified himself by recounting the scene.
For the defense, the victim was "a dangerous man". "He had the will to take over in the fight, he did not have the will to kill him," pleaded Me Jean-Félix Luciani, arguing that his client had not wanted to give death.