Jealous Husband Sentenced to Prison for Shooting Orthodox Priest in Lyon

A jealous husband, accused of shooting an Orthodox priest in Lyon, was sentenced this Friday to eight years of imprisonment and his wife to two years for complicity by the Rhône Assize Court. Nikolaos Kakavelakis was found seriously injured on October 31, 2020 at the door of his church.

The jury did not follow the attorney general who had demanded 10 years of criminal imprisonment against Giorgi Praga, 42 years old, and Lela Khaburzaniya, 38 years old. The magistrate considered that the spouses had had an equivalent role in the attack on Nikolaos Kakavelakis.

“She pitted her husband against her lover”

At the time, the possibility of a terrorist attack had been feared the day after the attack on a basilica in Nice. But it quickly emerged that the crime had been motivated by a brief affair between the young woman and the Greek priest. According to the advocate general of the Rhône Assize Court, the husband’s jealousy was combined with the wife’s desire for revenge, rejected after two sexual relations.

“She pitted her husband against her lover, by assisting him in the criminal act, by giving him useful information for their common project,” launched Thierry Luchetta in his indictment. As for Giorgi Praga, “he did not act in uncontrolled rage, he acted out of cold calculation,” added the magistrate. Spotting and firing a sawed-off shotgun at close range demonstrates “a prepared desire to cause harm.”

Traumas from the past

After a painful past in Georgia, against a backdrop of civil war, the couple was hosted by the Emmaüs community in Burgundy and married in 2015, before settling in Lyon. According to a psychiatrist expert heard at the bar, the couple presents a fragility resulting from the trauma of the conflict in their country.

The brother of the accused testified this Friday morning. “We are children of war,” said Kakhaber Khaburzania, 43, exposing the traumatic memories inflicted by the Russian occupation in Georgia, including images of “corpses scattered across the city.”

Implicated by the defense and by the testimony of his ex-wife, who accused him of “control and manipulation”, Nikolaos Kakavelakis, did not attend the trial. “Even if he had all the faults of the earth, he did not deserve that,” said the attorney general.

2023-09-22 20:27:55
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