“This 36-year-old Algerian had 22 November on appeal, again contested any violence against the novelist, absent at the hearing.
Le Monde
The Paris Court of Appeal confirmed on Monday 7 February, the relaxed of a 36-year-old man who was accused by the novelist Edouard Louis for sending him sexually assaulted in December 2012. Riadh B., Nicknamed “Reda”, has also been confirmed its conviction to three months imprisonment with reprieve for the flights of a tablet and a mobile phone. But the Court of Appeal has requalified the flight facts with violence in simple flights.
This 36-year-old Algerian was on November 22, on appeal, again contested violence against Edward Louis, absent at the hearing as at the first trial. The General Prosecutor’s Office had required a four-year sentence of imprisonment, including two years, the same as that required at first instance.
The evening of December 25, 2012, Edouard Louis, who was then called Eddy Bellegueule, had filed a complaint for rape under the threat of an aggravated weapon and flights. To the police, he had reported having met in the street a man named Reda who had accompanied him at home. He who was still not yet the famous author with Eddy Bellegueule had explained that I had had sexual intercourse with “Reda”, before realizing that his tablet and his phone had disappeared.
Requalified Facts for “Sexual Assault”
Unmasked, Riadh B. Then became threatening, had strangled her with a scarf then raped, said Edouard Louis. From this episode, the writer had drawn the story of violence (threshold), published in January 2016, a few days before the fortuitous arrest of his assumed abuser in another case. At the end of the instruction, as in many cases of rape charges, the facts had been requalified in “sexual assault”, leading the case before a court and not to the seating.
“This is a huge victory, that of ten years of pressure and extrajudicial manipulations”, welcomed the France-Presse agency (AFP) the lawyer of Riadh B., Marie dosed . “Riadh B. is innocent and clam for ten years. His presumption of innocence has been flouted and raped a whole decade during,” she deplored.
“When a narrative contains no fictional line, he ends up triumphing,” reacted the lawyer of Edouard Louis, Emmanuel Pierrat, taking over the novelist.