France: start of the trial of the ex-boyfriend of a stabbed and burned alive teenager

“Fourteen stab wounds!”: the violence of the murder of Shaïna, 15, stabbed and burned alive in the north of France in 2019, raised tension on Monday at the trial of her ex-boyfriend, tried behind closed doors for murder, who continues to maintain his innocence.

“Fourteen stab wounds! And then he lights the fire, it went boom!”, Shaïna’s father flew in, trembling with anger, during a break in the hearing, after hearing medical expertise on the first day of the trial before the Oise miners’ assize court, in Beauvais.

“And as soon as he sees a key witness, he lowers his head, he dares not look”, he launched against the accused, who faces life imprisonment if the excuse of minority is lifted.

It is “someone cold, who has no feelings”, also lambasted the mother.

17 years old at the time, the young man, accused of having lured Shaïna, probably pregnant with him, into a shed to kill her and then burn her body, is on trial until Friday.

“He disputes the facts, screams his innocence,” said his lawyer, Me Adel Fares.

Thin, youthful face and hair tied in a bun, the accused, supported by his parents, faces in the room a dozen relatives of Shaïna.

This trial comes as the number of feminicides increased by 20% in France in 2021 compared to the previous year, with 122 women killed by their spouse or ex-spouse, according to the Ministry of the Interior.

In Beauvais, the court must in particular hear a friend to whom the accused allegedly confessed to the crime, “main witness for the prosecution” according to the family lawyer, Me Negar Haeri.

A doctor was also to mention injuries observed on the accused after the fact, attributed by him to friction or eczema, while, for this pathologist, they evoke burns.

At the call of the victim’s older brother, Yasin Hansye, a few dozen people gathered in support of the family outside the court.

“We are here to bring justice to my sister,” said Yasin Hansye.

On October 27, 2019, the body of the teenager was discovered almost entirely charred by the police, guided by a rumor.

The forensic expertise will reveal “multiple wounds” to the knife, but also that she was still breathing at the start of the fire.

The day before, she had gone out after a family dinner. In her purse, her relatives find a positive pregnancy test.

According to various experts, the teenager, who had undergone an abortion a few months earlier, was most likely starting a new pregnancy. According to the investigation, she attributed paternity to the accused, with whom she had an affair.

Two anonymous calls, then the testimony of the accused’s friend quickly direct the investigation. The young man says that the respondent told him the night of the facts that he had made an appointment with Shaïna to kill her.

This witness provides details known only to investigators. Shaïna refused to have an abortion, he reveals again.

Elements of telephony also incriminate the accused, whose laptop, like that of Shaïna, was bound near the shed shortly before the facts.

A fellow prisoner would have heard him “proudly say” that he had “killed his girlfriend, who was + a whore +, that he had” impregnated “”, wanting to prevent his family from learning about it. In prison, he said “prefer to take 30 years than to be the father of a bastard”, according to another prisoner.

The crime could be “a desperate attempt” to preserve his image, in a context of “cultural and religious prohibition” linked to sexuality, estimated an expert psychologist.

Two years earlier, Shaïna had been the victim of sexual assault, for which four other young people from her city were sentenced Thursday on appeal to suspended sentences ranging from six months to two years in prison.

For Me Haeri, his death “is the culmination of a long ordeal”, triggered by these filmed attacks.

Shaïna was treated “like something, with whom we sleep, but that we can delete”, deplores the lawyer.

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