“Look at them, Salim Berrada,” advocate general Philippe Courroye urges. Do you hear their suffering? Do you see this field of ruins that you left behind? » For a brief moment, the former photographer turns his head towards the benches of the civil parties, where around ten of the 17 young women who accuse him of aggravated rape and sexual assault have been standing shoulder to shoulder for nine days.
“Alone against all”, the magistrate described him in his indictment, as the stories that they have given at the bar of the Paris criminal court over the past nine days have “
bunkered
him into the concrete of his denials”. “This man is dangerous because he hears and respects nothing,” he insists before demanding a sentence of nineteen years of criminal imprisonment with two-thirds security, as well as a permanent ban from French territory and registration in the file of perpetrators of sexual offenses. Dangerous, because he is starting again, he underlines, recalling that Salim Berrada was reincarcerated and indicted for similar facts even though he had been released under judicial supervision.
Subscribe to read more
Already subscribed? To log in