The couple led a quiet retired life in Villemagne-l’Argentière, in the Hérault. In the summer of 2018, the former delivery boy killed his wife with about forty shovels, in a context of separation. Before the Hérault Court of Assizes in Montpellier, he faces life imprisonment.
“Do you recognize the facts?”, asks the president of the Montpellier Court of Assizes. Abderrahmane Khalid, now 83, replies in the affirmative but adds that he “does not entirely agree” with the findings of the investigation. In custody for 4 years. appears for the murder of his wife, Akila Cherrad, 73, whom he had married in Lyon in 1964. With the aggravating circumstance that it was his wife
It was the defendant’s brother who gave the alert on 2 August 2018 in the middle of the evening. The gendarmes had intervened in the house with swimming pool in the village of Villemagne-l’Argentière, in the Hérault where the couple had retired after fifty years in Grenoble. The defendant, then 79, had explained to the gendarmes that he had just killed his wife. She will be found in the garage, lying in a pool of blood, her face destroyed by about forty violent shovels, as the autopsy report will indicate. In police custody, the retiree explained that he had “lost his mind” and then tried to commit suicide the next day.
In April, Akila Cherrad filed for divorce. Then, in July, husband and wife filed a complaint against each other. He accused his wife of stealing documents, she accused him of violence. Asked by the president about his fifty years of marriage, Abderrahmane Khalid, who arrived in France from his native Algeria at the age of 16, recounts a “normal” life: “We never deprived ourselves, we gave gifts for girls’ birthdays, holidays in Senegal or the United States, or even bike rides with Akila.” According to the personality survey heard on Wednesday, behind this “perfect showcase” there was in fact an “internal chaos” within this couple who wanted above all to make people forget their Algerian origins.
Described as “strict” by the couple’s entourage, his wife, a laboratory assistant at a pharmaceutical company until her retirement, guided her family with the wand. Two of her daughters said they were kicked out of the house by their mother when they were 17 or 18, and all speak of a lack of affection on the part of both parents. Akila Cherrad regularly publicly devalued her husband, especially accusing him of his illiteracy. He was convinced that he had a lover, that he would never exist. At the helm, the eighty-year-old repeats that he has been “cuckold”. He did not intend to oppose the divorce but he did not understand it.
Abderrahmane Khalid will be questioned on the facts during the hearing on Thursday 13 October in the afternoon. The jurors will issue the verdict on Friday.
With AFP.
