At the assize court of the Rhône
Calmly he described to the court jurors of seats du Rhône “the real hell” lived at home. Romain Bourrinet, 42-year-old gendarme, spoke for a long time about his ex-wife, Jamila El Rhoufi, tried since Tuesday
for the murder of their little daughters, in June 2018. A woman he “really loved”, he says. At first. “She was very smiling, normal, dynamic, very beautiful and charming,” he recalls. She “fascinates” him and he “notices no particular sign.”
The couple met in 2011, got married a year later, a few months before little Alya was born. The “tipping point” of their relationship. The honeymoon quickly turns into a nightmare. “I was immediately dismissed”, testifies the gendarme, “excluded from his role of father” and stripped of his role of husband. Constantly rebuked by his wife. Permanently “incapacitated”. Humiliated, bullied.
A possessive mother, an “excluded” father who “cannot approach his daughters”
“Relationships are deteriorating”, communication too. The dark couple, separate rooms. She sleeps with her daughter. Him, in a small room. Lyna was born in 2014. “I even thought she was not mine,” continues the father. The arrival of the second girl will only push her parents further away, widening the gap between them a little more every day.
Romain can “no longer approach his daughters”. He is prohibited from bottle-feeding them, changing diapers, taking them alone to the park or picking them up from school. “In the evening, she would put them to bed before 7 pm so that I wouldn’t see them when I got home from work. Sometimes, I could go a week without seeing my daughters while they slept under the same roof, ”he says, moved, before specifying that he had secretly started divorce proceedings. It was just before the drama. “Today I miss them. There is not a single day that is not difficult for me. “
“Romain had no say. She spoke of him as if it were a monster when it was not true at all ”, confirms Myriam (1), her former sister-in-law. And to add: “Jamila was possessive with her daughters. Romain could never stay with them for long because she came to pick them up right away. »At the bar, the young woman delivers a powerful testimony. At the time, she was married to Jamila’s brother.
“She killed her next to us”
The weekend of the drama, the couple went to her home “by surprise”. Miriam, her husband and their daughter were napping in the next room when Alya was probably suffocated by her mother. “She was alive when we arrived. She was in the living room, yellow in complexion. She hadn’t moved at the sight of her cousin, the witness sobbed. Maybe if I had seen something we could have saved her. At least she ”. For Lyna, the damage was already done. But that, the couple had no idea. Jamila had told them that the little one had stayed up late at night and was still sleeping.
“We said to ourselves that it was strange to sleep so much and to see that her mother was not going to wake her up. And then she killed Alya next to us. With the greatest composure. She was serene since she offered us, as if nothing had happened, to go eat pasta. For Myriam, the identity of the culprit is in no doubt. “I’ve known from the start that it’s her. There was only Jamila in the house. Two children who die in their sleep, it’s inconsistent, right? », She wonders before the accused confesses.
Today, the 30-year-old confesses that she must have had trouble falling asleep. “I’m terrified that my daughter will take a nap,” she adds, still saying to herself “haunted by the vision of the body” of the two dead girls. Since the drama, Myriam has pinned the photo of Lyna and Alya on her fridge. “When my daughter asks me, I tell her that they are her cousins, that they have gone very far and that she cannot see them. But, when she grows up, I will have to explain the truth to her … “
The verdict is expected Friday.
(1) The first name has been changed.