She hadn't given any sign of life for a week.
The lifeless body of the young Sihem, 18, was found in a forest in the Gard on the night of Wednesday to Thursday, according to our information.
He is the main suspect who confessed between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m.
The high school student, a teenager without history, had left around 11:10 p.m., Wednesday, January 25, the social housing on the ground floor occupied by her grandmother Fatima, 95 years old.
Since tonight, Sihem's smartphone has never answered multiple calls from her relatives and family.
It was the father who went to declare the disappearance of his only daughter, born in a family of four children, on Thursday January 26, at the police station in Alès.
The file was then sent to the Gard gendarmerie group, which began the investigations for "worrying disappearance".
A man taken into custody
The public prosecutor of Alès, François Schneider, had finally opened a procedure for kidnapping and sequestration which made it possible to deploy additional means of investigation.
"Obviously, the investigators have sufficient evidence to believe that Sihem did not disappear of his own free will," said Me Sara Benlefki, the family's lawyer.
The investigation had progressed rapidly after the disappearance of the young girl.
Mahfoud H., a 39-year-old man, was taken into custody on Tuesday by the gendarmes of the Nîmes research section.
He was close to the victim.
Several searches had taken place at his home.
Mahfoud's ex-girlfriend had also been taken into custody.
Read alsoDisappearance of young Sihem: two suspects in police custody
In 2015, he was sentenced to 12 years in prison, with two other accomplices, for a series of organized gang robberies and armed robberies in the Alès region in 2012. And he was to appear this Wednesday, February 1, before the Gard Assize Court for a home confinement case dating back to 2011.
