The 37 -year -old man is accused of having violated and struck a young woman in a hotel room in 2016 on the sidelines of a concert in Paris.
mo12345lemonde With AFP
The trial of Moroccan star singer Saad Lamjarred, accused of having raped and struck a young woman in a hotel room in 2016 on the sidelines of a concert planned in Paris, opened in the morning of Monday 20 February.
Saad Lamjarred, 37, appears free before the Paris Assize Court. In black suit and white shirt, he took place in the front row, alongside an interpreter. The civil party, Laura P., seated on a bench on the other side of the small courtroom.
The facts she denounces date back to October 2016. Aged 20, she had followed the pop star and a couple of her friends to an “After”, after having met them in a nightclub. At the end of an evening loaded with alcohol and cocaine, she had accompanied Saad Lamjarred to her hotel on the Champs-Elysées. They kissed each other but when he had become more enterprising, she had tried to arrest him, she told the investigators. He would then have struck and raped her.
She had fled the room and was taken care of by hotel employees, who described a young woman “terrorized” and crying. These same employees had stopped the probably drunk man who was pursuing it.
Saad Lamjarred claims to have only defended himself when Laura P. suddenly attacked her when they kissed, and disputes any penetration. He had continued it only to avoid a “scandal” because he was known. The singer, adored in Morocco and famous in everyone Arabic, was in Paris for a concert planned at the Palais des Congrès.
Incarcerated in the process, he was released under an electronic bracelet in 2017 – before being briefly placed in detention in 2018 because indicted for the rape of another young woman in Saint -Tropez (Var) . Saad Lamjarred was also implicated for rapes in similar circumstances in Casablanca and New York. His trial in Paris is scheduled until Friday.