“For us, it is a feminicide”. While the trial of the alleged murderer of his daughter Marie-Bélen opens this Monday before the assize court for minors in Aix-en-Provence, Ruben Pisano does not digest the qualification adopted by the judge. “We are certain that the assassin was looking for a woman, not our daughter in particular, and that the theft of his phone is not the driving force behind the action, he continues, his voice tight. We expect him to speak, to say why he did this. »
The murder of this 21-year-old student from Alès, stabbed on March 17, 2019 at the exit of a metro station in Marseille, had moved even the mayor of the city. In a press release, he had called on the police and the justice system to “do everything possible to find the culprit as soon as possible so that he is judged and punished commensurate with the horror of his act”. Identified by his DNA in the months that followed, the 17-year-old was finally prosecuted for “murder intended to prepare or facilitate an offense”, in this case the theft of the victim’s mobile phone. He faces life imprisonment.
“There remains a young man who kills a young woman”
“For us, it’s a bit of the ease of using the theft of a four-penny phone,” says Me Béryl Brown, lawyer for Marie-Bélen’s family. In my opinion, this theft pollutes the file. If you evacuate the question of the telephone, there remains a young man who kills a young woman when they do not know each other. I kill you for what you are. “. Also, the lawyer intends to plead a “non-intimate feminicide”: “Legally, we cannot have it requalified in this sense, but my role as a civil party is to put the question in the debate, to question the court and jurors on this notion. For his part, Me Denis Fayolle, defense lawyer, did not wish to make a statement before the trial.
“In France, femicide is often reduced to marital feminicide, which is the most visible,” laments Rosa Muriel Mestanza, teacher and doctoral student in sociology and gender at the University of Paris-Cité. “In Latin America, different types of feminicide have long been distinguished. There is also talk of territorial feminicides, used as a way of appropriating land, of non-intimate feminicides, committed by people with whom the victim has no intimate connection, like street harassment which would end in femicide. »
Rosa Muriel Mestanza is not only a researcher, she is also close to Marie-Bélen: “It was like my little sister, she was 9 years old when I met her, I was married to her brother. She was going to go on Erasmus in Portugal, she was someone who was overflowing with life, an incredible artist and very committed to the fight against all forms of injustice. The last photo we have of her is during the March 8 demonstration in Marseille. Her family and friends are calling for a feminist rally in Paris and outside the Aix-en-Provence Assize Court on Friday, the expected last day of the trial. To make visible this “non-intimate feminicide” but also, and above all perhaps, “because that’s what Marie-Bélen would have done. »