The international pillar, judged this Tuesday, May 30, was arrested on Friday in Montpellier after hitting his partner. He reproached her for having smoked in secret. In recurrence of violence, he receives a year in prison which he will serve with an electronic bracelet. The prosecution had requested 18 months in prison with a warrant of committal.
Mohamed Haouas came out free from the Villeneuve-lès-Maguelone remand center (Hérault) last night. But the ax of a clean break from his professional life – international rugby pillar – and sentimental – married and father of two children – did not go far at the end of his high-risk trial for particularly unpleasant domestic violence.
The imposing rugby player was still sentenced to one year in prison, but without immediate imprisonment. He will therefore serve his sentence under electronic surveillance, with a bracelet, an appointment being made with the sentencing judge on June 26. A sanction “proportionate” to the facts specified the court at the time of its deliberation.
“I hear a man say he knocked for love!”
Previously, the deputy prosecutor had fired a red bullet on the pillar and asked for the very heavy sentence of 18 months in prison, cumulative of one year for attacking his wife and 6 months of revocation of an old conviction. for violence (in 2014, he had jostled a police officer while escaping from a burglary).
“I’m not going to make an example and even if the victim did not file a complaint, these facts are intolerable, they are domestic violence and I hear a man tell us that it was out of love that he did it. hit!” deplored the representative of the prosecution. Impassive in the box, Haouas awkwardly defended himself.
“If I had put a big slap…”
Friday, in front of the Montpellier shopping center where his wife had recently worked, he tripped her, slapped her while she was on the ground, before dragging her to his car.
“I slapped him a little, if I had slapped him a big slap, it leaves marks, but I didn’t hit then … I’m sorry, I love him,” he said. The reason for his anger?
He couldn’t stand her smoking in secret. He finally recognized a fit of violent and uncontrollable jealousy tinged with a disarming machismo.
“I have a good salary, I prefer that she does not work”
“I have a good salary, I prefer that she does not work. She has the right to smoke, but if she lies for a cigarette… I imagined things, I made films, women brides cheat on their husbands… he explained, before saying that even he is “against” domestic violence and admitting it: “I didn’t control myself, it was stronger than me”.
Enough to fear a recurrence for the prosecution, recalling that Haouas, tried on May 12 for other violence dating back to 2014, awaits his deliberation on June 30… But it is undoubtedly the weight of the testimony of the victim who saved Mohamed Haouas from prison. This courageous mother came to the bar with dignity to ensure and reassure the audience: she is a free woman, neither submissive nor under the influence and she does not want her family life, which has lasted for more than ten years, to be shattered.
“It’s the first time he’s got his hands on me”
“It’s the first time he’s got his hands on me, he’s never behaved violently, she said. I want to continue life with my husband.”
So Me Medico for the civil party and Me Gallix, in defense, pleaded in the same direction of appeasement and a union to be saved. Recalling for the first the current context: “The causes are deeper than cigarettes, the couple tells you that the period is difficult, there is the transfer to Clermont-Ferrand, the move, the employment contract, the change of children’s school… When the benchmarks change, it generates tension”.
And the chaotic journey of his client for the second: “he grew up in a difficult neighborhood and the marriage was a culmination, you can’t ignore that nothing happened for ten years”.