Lakhdar Matoug was sentenced Friday to 27 years in prison by the Paris Assize Court for the murder of his wife, Assia, whose body he then cut up and scattered the remains in the Parisian park of Buttes-Chaumont.
The two defense lawyers failed to convince the popular jury of the absence of intention to kill on the part of the man who is now 53 years old, agreeing with the prosecutor’s requisitions.
If it was for “murder” that Lakhdar Matoug was convicted, five days of hearing did not fully shed light on the reasons for the act, this argument which, according to him, degenerated and led him to strangle his wife – for several minutes, according to the legal experts, and not a few seconds as he always claimed.
On Thursday, the prosecution retraced the quite banal life of this couple from Algeria, parents of three children, living in the Paris suburbs, as much undermined by debt as the wear and tear of their relationship.
A couple locked in their suburban lock-up, described the accusation, only speaking to each other via messaging. A couple without violence or scandal, in which there existed only “the solitude of one and the other”, considered Mr. Tcholakian for the defense.
Even more than the vagueness of the motive, it was “the completely extraordinary aftermath”, as described by the general counsel, which concentrated the questions.
How could this ordinary man, without fuss, unanimously perceived as “calm”, nicknamed “Zen”, lie the lifeless body of his wife on the sofa while asking the children not to wake up “mom, tired and sick”?
Then, the next day, to cut the body with a grinder? To scatter the remains, in plastic bags, among the plant waste in the four corners of Buttes-Chaumont? To go to Bobigny, in the suburbs, to throw the bag containing the bust in a vacant lot?
The defense was able to rely on expert reports reporting a phenomenon of “derealization”, “psychological dissociation”.
“He has no thoughts, no strategy,” Mr. Beyreuther insisted for the defense, assuring that the accused was “not premeditated,” any more than in “a planned logistical organization.”
A defense swept aside by the prosecution, which recalled Thursday in its indictment the purchase, to cut up the body, of a grinder in a large DIY store, the two return trips between the Montreuil home and the Buttes-Chaumont park, the declaration of the disappearance to the police, the messages left for his wife – “Yes, Assia, where are you? » -, until the confessions during the third hearing in police custody, two weeks later.
“No derealization, no man under the influence of alcohol. On the contrary, a very grounded man,” the prosecution representative concluded.
