On hunger strike since his conviction for his role in the Nice attack on July 14, 2016, Mohamed Ghraieb was denied a request for release pending his appeal, his lawyer said. The investigating chamber of the Paris Court of Appeal considers that the continued detention remains “justified” because it constitutes “the only way” to guarantee its presentation to justice and to put an end to an “exceptional and persistent disorder to public order”.
Found guilty of having participated in the preparation of the attack, Mohamed Ghraieb was sentenced on December 13 to eighteen years’ imprisonment. This 47-year-old Franco-Tunisian appeared free during the hearing before being imprisoned. He appealed, then he then filed a request for release in early January.
A state not “incompatible with detention”
In its judgment, the court notes that the sentence to which he was sentenced is “likely to encourage him to flee” to Tunisia, where he “has family ties”, although he is no longer in possession of his French and Tunisian passports.
The judges also considered that the state of health of Mohamed Ghraieb, hospitalized following his hunger strike and who had lost more than 20% of his weight in a few weeks, was not “incompatible with detention “. “This rejection is staggering, reacted his lawyer, Me Vincent Brengarth. His state of health is alarming, since he is determined to continue his hunger strike which he started on December 15 in protest of his innocence. The appeal trial should not be held for several months.