Three alcoholic men arrive at the home of another around 10 p.m. on August 15, 2019, in Rédange, in the Pays-Haut. They pretend to be police. The victim opens. She is kicked, punched. His attackers tie his hands with a shoelace, they push a sock into his mouth. They heat a knife and lay the blade on his neck.
The victim is then embarked by the trio in a car which takes them to one of the guys, in a nearby village. The violence continues. The man is threatened with death with a kitchen hatchet. His attackers make him walk on all fours in the room, they cut his hair, they continue to beat him with an iron bar. They steal his credit card, try to empty his account, without success. Then they end up taking him home around 5 a.m.
The victim thus details this sordid night to the gendarmes when she files a complaint the next day. She identifies two men, the third will never be worried. All speak Portuguese. The brutally attacked man also recognizes a woman. The one he’s just left, kicking her out. He says she was there part of the night. She witnessed the scenes of violence and humiliation he suffered. She is being prosecuted as an accomplice and for failure to assist a person in danger.
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“He’s a Tarantino!” »
The trial was held on Tuesday before the Thionville Criminal Court. Surveillance cameras near the victim’s home captured the described comings and goings. Scientific investigations confirm the presence of the defendants in the apartment. And the traces found during the medical examination agree with the complainant’s statements.
Only one of the two men confused by the investigation appeared at the bar. “I didn’t know what other people were capable of with me,” he explains. He minimizes his role. He especially pushes the woman, also Portuguese, 38 years old, pursued at his side.
In August 2019, he had collected her at home, with her two children. At a party, she confided that her ex had hit and raped her. This is what would have triggered the fury of alcoholic attackers. “She gave us the address,” recalls the defendant.
“So we would blame my client for having shared her problems, her suffering? “, chokes the lawyer of the young woman, Me La Schiazza. He pleads for release, denounces the extreme violence of these men who would have prevented his client from expressing her opposition. “What is described is a film, it is a Tarantino! “The public prosecutor, however, requires a year in prison, suitable for conversion, against him.
On the other hand, the deputy prosecutor requests the immediate imprisonment of the other defendants: four years in prison with an arrest warrant against the Brazilian defendant, 43 years old, absent from the proceedings. And four years in prison, including one year suspended against the Portuguese defendant, present at the trial. A sentence of “excessive severity”, according to his lawyer Me Fernandez. He believes that his client was manipulated. Admittedly, the 45-year-old man has had some mistakes. “But he did not evade the authorities, he has no record, he works, he has a family,” insists the council.
The court will deliver its decision on July 13.
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