A forty-year-old suspected of having, in June 2022, attempted to slit the throat of a Nigerian woman who was prostituting herself in the Bois de Vincennes will soon be tried in court, AFP learned on Tuesday from a source close to the case.
The man, who has constantly denied his involvement, remains in pre-trial detention until his trial for attempted murder, this source said.
Now aged 45, he faces life imprisonment because he is a repeat offender: he has been convicted several times, notably for rape in 2007 in Guadeloupe.
On the night of June 8 to 9, 2022, a Nigerian prostitute, aged 28, was attacked with a box cutter in a van, according to the indictment order dated at the end of January and of which AFP was aware Tuesday.
“I was leaning with my back to him when he grabbed my neck (...), the guy cut my throat, strangled me,”
the complainant said during her hearing at the end of June 2022.
One of her colleagues, who was also in the van, intervened,
“fighting”
with the attacker, who fled.
She says she saw the victim covered in blood, holding
“a 20 euro note”
in his hand .
“Highlight the fragile and dangerous situation of prostituted women in France”
Several female prostitutes, interviewed during the investigations, confided that they were often attacked by clients wanting to recover the amount paid.
But here the attempted throat slitting took place before any sexual act.
This chronology
“suggests”
that the attack was the
“one and only goal pursued”
, analyzed the investigating judge.
The woman, seriously injured, was recognized as having an ITT (total incapacity for work) of more than three months by a psychiatrist.
For his lawyer, Me Kathleen Taieb, the trial
“will highlight the fragile and dangerous situation of prostituted women in France”
.
For his part, the suspect denied it throughout the investigations.
“I am someone who has never attacked anyone, who has never cut anyone, who has never violated anyone.
I am innocent
,” he assured from his first interrogation.
His DNA present on the cutter, the murder weapon?
“I may have lent my cutter.
“Can someone bring him back to the scene
,” he defended himself in September 2022. His glasses, also found?
He claimed to have forgotten them
“on site several days”
before.
The magistrate notes that his telephone records place him in a nearby area on the evening of the events.
And if the complainant could not
“formally”
recognize him, despite his
“distinctive signs”
such as his tattoos, the magistrate explains it by
“the weak light which reigned within the van”
, relying on a reset situation achieved in November.
The accused's lawyer was not immediately available for comment.