In the accused box of the Var Assize Court, in Draguignan, there were therefore none of the shooters who took the lives of Sérigné M’Baye Kébé and Anli Riziki on October 21, 2016 in the KFC parking lot, boulevard des Plombières in Marseille. This is what the Var jurors decided after a ten-day appeal trial.
An author who became an accomplice…
However, the court sentenced Sofiane Tatoui to 28 years of criminal imprisonment. The same sentence as at first instance. But his status in this double murder has now changed in the eyes of justice. From co-lead author, he became “accomplice to murder and attempted murder by an organized gang”.
A role that he took on on his own last week during his interrogation by President Patrick Véron, admitting to having provided the scooter, a helmet, a hood and gloves for the shooters.
Sentenced last year to 30 years in prison for complicity by instruction, aid or assistance, Kamel Meziani was for his part acquitted. Since his arrest in Morocco at the end of 2019, he has proclaimed his innocence.
When the verdict was read, the now forty-year-old with a thick build, white shirt and white polo shirt for the occasion, fleetingly took the hand of his lawyer, Me Keren Saffar, once all the accusations against him had been rejected.
…And an accomplice cleared of all suspicion
“Acquittal is not a mark of weakness, had pleaded five hours earlier, Me Christian Saint-Palais, one of his four lawyers. Justice must be feared. It is only so if it is respectable.”
Each in their own way, Kamel Meziani’s lawyers criticized the errors of an investigation “dependent” where, according to Me Raphaël Chiche, justice had a time “the intentional desire to mislead the judges’ convictions”.
“Everything is messed up in this file”Ms. Saffar even got carried away, not hiding having “very bad experience” the conviction of his client last year by the Bouches-du-Rhône Assize Court.
“The accusation’s premise is false, she continued. We decided that Kamel Meziani was the head of the Oliviers network and that everything went through him. It’s ridiculous to support this. To do this, you have to provide proof.”
These are in fact lacking against this accused, whose defense demonstrated during the first trial that he was not in France at the time of the facts. In Aix-en-Provence, the attorney general Christophe Raffin thus half-heartedly acknowledged a certain fragility of the case. In Draguignan, the representative of the public prosecutor conceded that she was only relying on “tiny elements”.
Complaint against the investigating judge
According to the investigators’ thesis, confirmed by a witness under he had been a victim three days earlier. All within the framework of a turf war for control of the deal point of the Mediterranean city.
“A weakness in legal reasoning“even some”intellectual laziness” said Me Saint-Palais. “The witness under
The defense and Me Chiche are targeting, first of all, the investigating judge. “She knew, thanks to another file concerning him, that Kamel Meziani had been in Spain since October 16, 2021. And yet she retained these elements in front of her, going so far as to rely on them in her indictment order. to send Kamel Meziani back to court. It’s making fun of the world!”
A complaint for forgery by a person holding public authority was thus filed against the judge, “to awaken the spirits“.
However, Kamel Meziani is not done with justice. In two weeks, he will appear on appeal before the Aix-en-Provence criminal court for his alleged role as head of the Oliviers network between 2013 and 2016. He is also still indicted in the double murder of the Marine Bleue, committed on August 22, 2021.
1. Sentenced by default to 30 years in prison at first instance, Boualem Mekboul is on the run abroad.
