It was 1 a.m. on Thursday, February 2, when the investigating magistrate and the gendarmes discovered the body of young Sihem. The 18-year-old high school student disappeared on the night of January 25 to 26. She was lying on the edge of an isolated dirt road in La Grand-Combe, a town adjoining Salles-du-Gardon, in the Gard, where she had left her grandmother’s home on January 25 shortly before midnight.
In what context were these confessions made?
Arrested on January 31 by investigators, Mahfoud Hansali confessed the following day at the end of the evening. To justify his gesture, “he evoked an argument against the background of a romantic relationship with the young girl”, explained the prosecutor of the Republic of Nîmes Cécile Gensac, during a press briefing this Thursday. “The suspect wished to speak about the facts in order to be able to give this answer to the family, on behalf of Sihem and in order to be able to relieve his conscience”. To date, he remains indicted on the count of sequestration without voluntary release before the seventh day. But after his confession, the procedure should be quickly reclassified as murder. He was imprisoned overnight at the Nîmes remand center.
In order not to reveal the instruction which begins, the prosecutor did not reveal the elements in her possession on the course of this disastrous evening. The body of the young woman is now in the hands of the medical examiner who will deliver his conclusions over the next few days.
Who is Mahfoud Hansali, the man who confessed to the girl’s murder?
Very quickly, the investigators were interested in the disturbing profile of Mahfoud Hansali. This 39-year-old man knew the victim who was, it seems, a cousin of his wife with whom he was in the process of separating. Cécile Gensac gave some details on her legal journey. He has been convicted five times for offenses against property. His criminal record also has eight entries for driving-related convictions.
Above all, he was sentenced on April 2, 2015 by the Gard Assize Court to twelve years’ imprisonment for robberies. A sentence “executed in its entirety” from September 21, 2012, underlines the public prosecutor. He was imprisoned in a remand center before being released from prison on November 28, 2017. He then benefited from “a successive and progressive sentence adjustment”, continues the public prosecutor.
Why was the other person in custody released?
Mahfoud Hansali was to appear free on February 1 before the Assize Court of Gard for a violent home jacking on a couple of traders whom he is suspected of having assaulted and kidnapped at his home in 2011. This trial has been adjourned. On Wednesday, the relatives of the victim, gathered in front of the courthouse in Nîmes, were moved that such a dangerous individual is still at large.
Also placed in custody for the head of “non-assistance to person in danger”, his ex-companion was released. “The elements collected did not make it possible to establish that she had knowledge of the facts, nor of a potential concealment” of these, specifies Cécile Gensac.