While the Court of Revision is studying a possible annulment of the verdict rendered in 2003 by the Assize Court, Farid El Haïry is fighting for his honor to be cleared.
“It is time for justice to recognize that I am innocent”, launched this Thursday evening on BFMTV Farid El Haïry. He had been convicted nearly twenty years ago for the rape of a minor who has since admitted having lied.
This is why he asked the Court of Revision on Thursday to “give him back his dignity” by annulling the verdict rendered in 2003 by the Northern Assize Court, “to wash the honor” of his family. “They never doubted me,” he recalled.
Farid El Haïry returned to the first moments of the investigation, twenty-four years earlier. While he had an alibi (he was on vacation in Morocco, editor’s note), the 17-year-old young man at the time had “the impression of being the ideal client” for the gendarmerie.
“The accusation against Farid El Haïry is only based on a remark (by the complainant, editor’s note) and a small racist connotation”, lamented Maître Frank Berton, his lawyer.
“I could have ended my life”
Then come years of incarceration, then annual check-ins at the gendarmerie, with, constantly, this stigma of being “a rapist, a pointer”.
“I could have ended my life. I lived with this burden. At that time, deep inside me, I am very unhappy […] I died in 2003,” he said.
Under advisement, the decision of the Court of Revision will be delivered on December 15. “Justice does not like to recognize its errors […] It is important to show the damage that justice can cause”, wished to recall Frank Berton who hopes that the cancellation will not be referred to an assize court but directly recorded by the Court of Revision.
Farid El Haïry could become the twelfth condemned to the assizes recognized as a victim of miscarriage of justice since 1945.