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Case of the "suicide" with bound feet and fists: five years later, an anonymous letter reappears

2020-05-28T15:30:49.751Z


A letter which is part of the documents in the file under seal and affirming that Kamel Kerrar, discovered dead in 2014 in Douai (North), had been


The discovery only deepens a family's anger at the justice system. More than five years after she was lost from the Douai (North) court archives, an anonymous letter saying that Kamel Kerrar had been the victim of a murder has just been found by the justice system. On December 26, 2014, this 40-year-old man was discovered dead in the Scarpe river, in Douai. The Northerner "hands tied by a scarf and the laces of his two shoes are tied between them," details the first police report. The suicide track is quickly favored, even if, according to Kamel's family, the latter was unable to tie his laces alone due to multiple sclerosis.

On January 1, 2015, an element came to reinforce the family's conviction. A disturbing anonymous letter on the death of Kamel Kerrar, received by the prosecution of Douai, says that it is a murder. The case was however closed a few weeks later by the police, who concluded that he had committed suicide. Justice validates this decision, but the Kerrar family does not believe it. In August 2016, Kamel's relatives therefore filed a complaint for intentional homicide with the creation of a civil party.

Among the seals, clothes never found

Entrusted to an examining magistrate, the investigation quickly encountered a new problem: seals disappeared. The clothes Kamel was wearing were apparently forgotten in a police station boiler room. Of the scarf that tied Kamel's wrists, there are only a few centimeters left ... As for the letter addressed to the prosecutor, it simply disappeared from the seals, without even having been analyzed. Faced with the feeling of being ignored by the justice system, the Kerrar family finally decides, in March 2019, to file a complaint for "destruction or modification of the evidence of a crime" against officials of the Douai police station and the prosecution of the same city . The investigation is entrusted to the Lille prosecutor.

If the clothes have never been found, the Douai public prosecutor's office has just recovered the anonymous letter. In a letter of April 29, the vice-prosecutor of Douai warns the Lille prosecutor "that after a new thorough examination of the investigation procedure, the anonymous letter dated January 1, 2015 appears well in original in the file of instruction. "A new shock for the Kerrar family," who once again feels that justice has in reality never wanted to shed light on the circumstances of Kamel's death, "deplores Me Damien Legrand, lawyer for the relatives of Kamel.

An expertise to search for DNA traces

Faced with this new development, and while the investigation remains open to explain the causes of the death of Kamel Kerrar, Mes Damien Legrand and Loïc Bussy have just filed a request for an expert opinion on this letter. The criminal lawyers and the Kerrar family thus wish that the letter be examined in order to "determine the possible genetic and papillary traces that it could reveal". Even if, after five years, the chances of discovering scientific elements seem very low. "I am delighted to see the public prosecutor finally taking an interest in this file," explains Mr. Legrand. I just regret that he does it only when his responsibility is likely to be called into question and not to find out what happened to Kamel. "

Contacted, Frédéric Teillet, the prosecutor of Douai, explains that the mail “was found during a new examination of the procedure. There was no desire to hide it. In addition, the family had access to the file since 2016 and also had not found this anonymous letter. "The prosecution also assures" to be favorable to new analyzes. And if they had not been done at the time, it was not for lack of interest, but because the mail, a loose leaf, would only have made it possible to find the DNA of all the people who have touched the courthouse. "

Above all, if the public prosecutor admits "an error with the loss of clothing", he assures that "important investigations have taken place in this case, whether they were by the police or by an investigating judge". And that "there is nothing today to contradict the hypothesis of suicide or to affirm that there was a murder".

Source: leparis

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