Why, despite his multiple convictions, was the suspect still at large?

Wednesday evening, Mahfoud H. confessed to investigators to have killed Sihem and the location of the body. He should have been in the dock of the Gard Assize Court that same day to answer for the robbery of a bar-tobacconist with kidnapping of the couple of traders, in Laval-Pradel, on December 1. 2011. He was to appear free, alongside his brother-in-law, before the popular jury in Nîmes. Even though he had been sentenced by this same Assize Court to twelve years’ imprisonment on April 29, 2015.

Thursday, in her press briefing, the public prosecutor of Nîmes, Cécile Gensac, returned to the heavy judicial past of the suspect, already convicted thirteen times. With additional information sent to the press at the end of the evening. She explained in particular that he had served “the entirety of his sentence pronounced at the assizes”.

Sentences served simultaneously

Sihem’s relatives, who the day before had expressed their support for the young woman whose fatal fate they still did not know, were moved that the main suspect in this case could “find himself free and in the capacity to commit this crime. , despite his lengthy criminal record. “On our side, we did not try him for his previous crimes. Today, the fact that it affects Sihem is a whole different story, ”explained, Wednesday, in front of the courthouse, Azzadine Maallou, a cousin of the young woman.

When on April 27, 2015, Mahfoud H. appeared before the Assize Court for a series of armed robberies and ram thefts, he had already served two and a half years of preventive detention since he had been imprisoned since September 21, 2012. He will have remained eight years, five months and five days in prison “before his release from prison on February 26, 2021”, specifies the prosecutor. He then benefited from “a successive and progressive sentence adjustment” decided by the sentence enforcement judge. “The general system of reduction of sentences is applicable to any convict in France”, specifies the parquet floor.

A disturbing psychological expertise

On Wednesday, Mahfoud H. was to appear free before the Assize Court of Gard. For the robbery of the bar-tabac and the kidnapping of the couple of managers, he was also “placed in pre-trial detention for thirty-four months as part of this case”, specifies Cécile Gensac, until November 28, 2017. This sentence was “purged simultaneously” with that pronounced by the Assize Court in 2015.

Ex-husband of Sihem’s cousin, he knew the victim who was babysitting looking after the couple’s children. Free lunch evokes a psychological expertise commissioned by justice during its previous visit to the assizes. The expert had concluded that there was a slight intellectual deficiency and cognitive disorders, as well as very poor capacities for development, analysis and self-criticism. He had described him as having a narcissistic, prideful, stubborn, impulsive, immature personality, which fails to integrate the other in the relationship. However, he was not suffering from any mental pathology of an alienating dimension.

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