He had committed “the unthinkable”, according to the prosecution. The ex-husband of singer Souad Massi was sentenced on Saturday to 15 years in prison by the Assize Court of Bouches-du-Rhône, for having attempted to murder their two daughters while trying to commit suicide, in 2017.
“The children were the object of his revenge,” said Advocate General Régine Roux when requesting “at least 20 years’ imprisonment” against Abdellatif Z. The man, who had served eight months in pre-trial detention after the facts, immediately returned behind bars.
“It’s terrible, reacted his lawyer, Jean Boudot. We’re going to appeal, and that’s also saddening us for (the couple’s daughters), we could have had a decision that would allow us to close this case, but we can’t accept such a decision that misses the man that ‘he is “.
A long “descent into hell”
Since Wednesday, witnesses and experts had followed one another in Aix-en-Provence to come back to the meeting of the person concerned and Souad Massi, a distant cousin of his first wife, with whom he had had three other children. They retraced their years of marriage, the birth of their daughters in 2005 and 2010, the career of the singer which takes off, their life as a couple which little by little withers.
In the summer of 2016, a few months after the revelation of her husband’s former adulterous relationship, Souad Massi told him that she wanted a divorce. There followed a long “descent into hell”, in the words of Elsa Loizzo, the other lawyer of Abdellatif Z., 64, who fell into a deep depression with effects increased tenfold by phases of massive alcoholism. “We are in the disease, not in the character trait”, added Jean Boudot: “The unthinkable is unthinkable for him too”.
On March 22, 2017, it was the last-ditch intervention of the emergency services, warned by Souad Massi, on the move, which saved the couple’s two daughters, then aged 6 and 11. Their father, found unconscious like them in their house in Bouc-Bel-Air, between Aix-en-Provence and Marseille, had given them medicine and then opened a gas bottle in the room where they were, before spreading in the home 40 liters of fuel which had not caught fire.
A “miracle” that the children escaped the tragedy
“It’s a miracle”, pleaded for the civil parties Me Olinka Malaterre. “And that’s why the attempt is punished like murder, because a miracle does not happen every day.”
It was a call from Abdellatif Z. himself, around 10:00 p.m., which alerted the singer. The accused then promises her that she will “understand the meaning of the word ‘suffer'”. But the Advocate General refused to see in this phone call a call for help: “The only saving call” is that of Souad Massi for help, launched the magistrate.
And yet, recalled Me Boudot in defense, experts themselves underlined “the ambivalence” of this call, perhaps a disguised, even unconscious call for help.
“It’s the story of a man who suffers, no one questions him,” admitted Romain Verzeni, also for the civil parties, Souad Massi and his daughters. “But what we are calling into question is that this suffering, he puts it above the lives of his daughters”, continued in his argument Me Verzeni, evoking “the paroxysm of domestic violence”.
“The Sadness of Drama”
“He is suffering, he is lost,” replied Elsa Loizzo for the defense, mentioning the “traumatic” announcement for Abdellatif Z. of Souad Massi’s desire to divorce, in the summer of 2016. An episode followed by a premiere suicide attempt.
“His suffering will end up breaking him and engulfing him and leading him to the unthinkable”, pleaded the lawyer, on behalf of an accused who from the opening of this trial on Wednesday had admitted the facts. “We offer you the darkness of the crime on the other side of the bar, I prefer the sadness of the drama”, concluded Jean Boudot.
As required by the Advocate General, the jurors also withdrew parental authority from Abdellatif Z. and retained the alteration of his discernment at the time of the facts, a circumstance which made him incur a maximum of 30 years of criminal imprisonment, against life if she had not been retained.