BACKGROUND: (From a previous post of this Blog. (Link below): "The facts of the case are that a widowed heiress of a car manufacturer, Ghislaine Marchal, was brutally murdered, allegedly by Raddad. The victim was found to be smothered in blood in the cellar of her property in Mougins, in the South of France. Evidence found at the scene of crime included two inscriptions on two doors, the victim’s blood used as the art medium. The phrases inscribed were as follows: “Omar m’a tuer” and “Omar m’a t”, meaning “Omar killed me”. This was considered sufficient evidence and Raddad was arrested. On February 2, 1994, Raddad was sentenced to 18 years in prison. Evidential Aspect: These famous inscriptions set in motion a multitude of questions that were raised with the evidence submitted and the scrutiny that it went under. Some of the questions raised were:
- How could a woman stabbed 16 times, drag herself and write on the wall?
Raddad in a 2010 interview with the French weekly Journal du Dimanche[3] said: “How an elderly woman, knocked out and gravely injured with 16 stab wounds, could drag herself from one end of the room to the other to write, ‘Omar killed me’ – twice – is something I’ve tried to visualize in my prison cell a thousand times in the dark. It’s impossible!” ......... "Raddad may be guilty, or he may be innocent. The only way of knowing is if he is awarded a fair trial. The uproar that was caused because of this case was not because of the outcome of the case. It was caused because of the way he was treated and of the way the decision was held. The possibility of the retrial will most definitely raise questions and cause more turmoil. Maybe even more than was present before as the global world continues to progress and become more inclusive and speak out on a greater level."
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PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Based on these new elements, the investigating committee of the Court of Revision, made up of five magistrates, began examining the request filed by the defense. His decision will then be reserved for several weeks, according to a judicial source, cited by the media in France. In its report, the investigating committee can either reject the request, or order additional information, or send it to the Court of Revision, which will then have the last word on the organization of a new trial. Sentenced in 1994 to 18 years imprisonment, without the possibility of appeal at the time, Omar Raddad, who has never ceased to proclaim his innocence, had in total spent more than seven years in prison. The Omar Raddad case is one of the most famous and controversial criminal cases in France."
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STORY: "Omar Raddad case: French justice examines a new request for review," published by New.in-24 (English) on November 25, 2021.
GIST: "Paris – The French justice examines this Thursday behind closed doors a new request for revision of the trial of Omar Raddad, this Moroccan gardener condemned, then pardoned without ever being exonerated, for the murder in 1991 of his boss Ghislaine Marchal.
Neither the applicant nor his lawyer Sylvie Noachovitch made a statement before the start of the hearing held in camera before the investigating committee of the Court of Revision.
Sentenced in 1994 to 18 years imprisonment, Omar Raddad had benefited from a partial pardon from President Jacques Chirac, then from parole in 1998. But this pardon did not annul the conviction and did not exonerate the gardener Moroccan.
Based on a report revealed by the newspaper Le Monde, the defense of Omar Raddad filed last June at the courthouse in Paris, a request for review of the trial, a very exceptional procedure in France.
The report drawn up in 2019 by a private expert, to which the French newspaper had access, concluded to the presence of about thirty traces of a complete male DNA not belonging to the gardener and found in one of the famous inscriptions. made with the blood of the victim, who designated Omar Raddad as the murderer.
The expert Laurent Breniaux, who analyzed 35 traces of one of the DNA present in the famous inscription “Omar me killed”, favors, in his report, the hypothesis of a deposit of fingerprints at the time of the facts, and not from subsequent “pollution” by investigators.
In other words, these genetic traces could have been deposited by the author of the inscription, who would then not be Mrs. Marchal but potentially the real murderer, believes the defense of Omar Raddad.
“These new elements represent a real hope”, affirms Maître Noachovitch, lawyer for Omar Raddad, who said she was “convinced that they are an upheaval of the file and obviously give rise to doubts about Omar’s guilt. Raddad ”.
Based on these new elements, the investigating committee of the Court of Revision, made up of five magistrates, began examining the request filed by the defense. His decision will then be reserved for several weeks, according to a judicial source, cited by the media in France.
In its report, the investigating committee can either reject the request, or order additional information, or send it to the Court of Revision, which will then have the last word on the organization of a new trial.
Sentenced in 1994 to 18 years imprisonment, without the possibility of appeal at the time, Omar Raddad, who has never ceased to proclaim his innocence, had in total spent more than seven years in prison.
The Omar Raddad case is one of the most famous and controversial criminal cases in France."
https://new.in-24.com/News/339602.html
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Check out New York Times story: "A Socialite, a Gardener, a Message in Blood: The Murder That Still Grips France," - at the link below.
"His supporters argue that Ms. Marchal’s real killer was able to prop the bed against the door while leaving the basement and wrote the messages to avoid detection by framing the gardener.
An empty handbag was not proof of theft, they said, and no jewels or other valuables went missing. Most important, neither Mr. Raddad’s DNA nor his fingerprints were ever found at the crime scene.
In 2015, new DNA technology led to a discovery at the scene of the traces of four unknown men. An expert for Mr. Raddad subsequently identified the presence of 35 traces of DNA from one unknown man that was mixed with the second message written in the victim’s blood, said Ms. Noachovitch, Mr. Raddad’s lawyer.
“This DNA must belong to the killer,” Ms. Noachovitch said, arguing that it was very unlikely that it came from investigators or others who contaminated the scene.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/20/world/europe/france-murder-ghislaine-marchal-omar-raddad.html
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