Fire on rue Erlanger: at trial, debate on his mental health of accused

Essia Boularès is sick, but how much was it when in February 2019, after a dispute with a neighbor, she set fire to her level and caused the death of ten people? The accused says he was in a delusional state. Without necessarily convincing.

by Henri Seckel

From time to time, Essia Boularès pours a little mineral water into the hollow of the hand, then rubs her face with it. Way of refreshing yourself, in the stifling Voltaire room of the ancient Palais de Justice de Paris, and of fighting sleep. Each day, the 44 -year -old accused ingests Valium, Nozinan, Risperdal, Deroxat and Mianserin. It is not uncommon to see her fall asleep in the box, knocked out by this daily cocktail of anxiolytics, neuroleptics and antidepressants.

Essia Boularès is sick. How much was it when, on the night of February 4 to 5, 2019, after a dispute with her neighbor who reproached her for listening to too loud music, she set fire to her level, causing a fire Who was going to kill ten people at 17 bis, rue Erlanger (Paris 16 e )? Since the facts are recognized by the interested party, the issue of the trial is there, in the understanding of her mental health – of the time and today. The penalty that will be pronounced against it depends on it.

To justify his gesture, committed under the empire of alcohol and cannabis, Essia Boularès had spoke several times of “revenge” towards her neighbor, who had violently hit his door during their argument. “I was out of control, I was not myself, I knew no longer what I was doing,” she said on Friday, February 17, saying that she was in a delusional state: “I Taken for the Messiah, I wore all the suffering that he could live on his cross, I invoked God, the angels, the Holy Spirit. I was in a state of hysteria. “

Psychiatrist experts, heard the day before, have expressed more rational conclusions: while recognizing that the accused’s psychiatric file gave “the dizzy” – around thirty stays in a psychiatric hospital, the last of which, -Anne, ended five days before the fire -they estimated that the discernment of Essia Boularès was “altered”, and not “abolished”, at the time of the facts, which therefore made it “accessible to a Criminal sanction “, while reducing the maximum penalty incurred from perpetuity to thirty years.

The abolition of discernment, which automatically leads to criminal irresponsibility, “it is when nothing other than the alienating disease can clarify the act, developed Daniel Zagury, one of the four experts brought to Take an opinion. There, it is clear, clear and without burrs: it does not meet the criteria of abolition. The declarations of its neighbors, its own words and the examination of the facts do not lead us at all to suppose A delusional gesture “. The outbreak of the fire was, according to him, nothing more than a “characteristic act” following a “banal argument”, which occurred in “a moment of emotional amplification linked to the taking of drugs and alcohol “. In summary, “it is not:” God told me to set fire “”.

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