The artist had not appeared at his trial at first instance nor, previously, at two meetings during the investigation, causing the issuance of an arrest warrant
Congolese rumba star Koffi Olomide, 65, is due to be tried on Monday in Versailles for sexual assault and kidnapping of four of his former dancers between 2002 and 2006, accusations he disputes.
At first instance, the Nanterre court had sentenced him in March 2019 to two years in prison for “sexual assault” on one of these young women, declared a minor at the time of the facts. The public prosecutor, who had required seven years’ imprisonment, appealed against this sentence. The star singer from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) was acquitted of the charges against three of the dancers.
Koffi Olomide, whose real name is Antoine Agbepa Mumba, had not appeared at his trial at first instance nor, previously, at two meetings during the investigation, causing the issuance of an arrest warrant. Me Emmanuel Marsigny did not wish to comment on the presence or not of his client at the hearing, scheduled for Monday at 2 p.m. before the Versailles Court of Appeal. The judgment will be reserved at a later date.
The concert hall of La Défense Arena, near Paris, announced Thursday the cancellation of Koffi Olomide’s concert scheduled for November 27.
The trial at first instance was held behind closed doors, which the civil parties did not request this time. The latter “count on the presence of Mr. Olomide” after an instruction in which he “largely evaded justice”, said Me David Desgranges, who defends three of the four dancers.
Aggravated rapes and forcible confinement
In 2007, a first dancer lodged a complaint and described to the courts her tours with Koffi Olomide in France, whom she said to live locked up near Paris in a pavilion watched by three guards without the possibility of leaving or calling. The other three, who file a complaint in 2009 and 2013, will confirm this story, according to the prosecution.
Sometimes, according to the story of the dancers – including one who assures us that she was a minor at the time – to justice, they were brought to a hotel room or to a recording studio for the singer to force them to have sex. . One of them reports that she suffered the scene twice a week. Another says that she let it go so as not to lose her job as a dancer. In June 2006, they escaped together from the Ile-de-France pavilion with a sheet of cloth after having put the guards to sleep using sleeping pills, according to their story.
Initially indicted for aggravated rape and forcible confinement in 2012, Koffi Olomide finally saw the examining magistrate send him back in 2018 to the criminal court for “sexual assault with violence, constraint, threat or surprise by a person in authority” – or sexual assault – and sequestration. He is also on trial for illegal aid in the entry and stay of dancers, who came from the DRC.
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