Nordahl Lelandais, sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of little Maëlys, is referred to the criminal court of Charleville-Mézières, in the Ardennes, on November 27 at 1:30 p.m. “for facts dated March 16, 2017” indicated Magali Josse , public prosecutor in Charleville-Mézières, in a press release.
He will be tried for “sexual assault imposed on a minor under 15 years of age” and “threat or act of intimidation to induce a victim not to file a complaint or to retract,” she said. The former soldier has already been convicted of sexual assault on two other second cousins the same year. Prosecuted as a repeat offender, “he faces a sentence of twenty years’ imprisonment”.
The facts allegedly took place when the victim was 14 years old. In a video broadcast on July 1, 2019 by BFMTV, the teenager had recounted having suffered his touching on the day of her father’s funeral. The accused then allegedly threatened to kill her if she said anything. Two years later, the young girl filed a complaint, after confiding in her mother.
Already convicted of two murders and sexual assaults
The Isère Assize Court sentenced Nordahl Lelandais in February 2022 to life imprisonment with a security measure of twenty-two years. The forty-year-old was on trial for the kidnapping and murder of Maëlys, 8 years old, as well as for sexual assault of two second cousins, aged 4 and 6, during the same summer of 2017.
He had already been sentenced in May 2021 in Chambéry to twenty years of imprisonment for the murder of young corporal Arthur Noyer in April 2017.