The question of mental health of the accused, who caused the death of ten people in 2019 by set fire to her building, had occupied the indictment as well as the defense pleadings.
MO12345LEMONDE
The Paris Assize Court condemned Essia Boularès, accused of having caused the death of ten people and made many injured in 2019 by burning his building on rue Erlanger, in Paris (16 e arrondissement), twenty-five years in criminal imprisonment, Thursday, February 23. After more than six hours of deliberation, the president of the court, Franck Zientara, justified this sentence by the extreme gravity of the facts “, evoking acts” not disconnected from reality “, with a start of fire” volunteer “,” in the middle of the night “, motivated by” anger and resentment “.
This sentence is accompanied by two-thirds security, as well as socio-judicial follow-up for fifteen years with a “care injunction”. The jurors considered that the “discernment” of Essia Boularès was well “altered” at the time of the facts, as concluded two psychiatric expertise, but they “ruled out the benefit of the reduction of sentence” permitted in this case by The penal code.
The sentence pronounced approaches the twenty-seven years that the Advocate General had claimed on Wednesday. The latter had admitted that the discernment of Essia Boularès, 44, was “altered” at the time of the facts, but he had asked the jury not to apply the reduction of sentence “with regard to the extreme gravity of the tragedy” provoked by his “voluntary, avenging and disproportionate action”.
“complex personality”
Essia Boularès, a 44 -year -old woman who suffers from addictions and important psychiatric disorders, had admitted having set fire to her building on the night of February 4 to 5, 2019, after a dispute with a neighbor. The toxic smoke and the flames had invaded the eight floors of this old building in the background in a few minutes, difficult to access for help, trapping many inhabitants in their apartment.
The question of mental health of the accused at the time of the facts had occupied the indictment as well as the pleadings of the defense lawyers. If Essia Boularès has “a complex personality”, its decision to set fire is neither “a delirious gesture”, nor “an impulsive gesture”, but the result of “his anger not controlled and exacerbated by his alcoholism”, had estimated the Advocate General, Rémi Crosson du Cormier.
The lawyers of Essia Boularès had invited the court to inject “a little nuance in this file”. While Essia Boularès has been chaining since adolescence with weaning and internal internments, lawyer Léa Hufnagel stressed that her “mystical crisis” three weeks before the facts had “no precedent” and was “not linked to take drugs or alcohol “. “It is a mixture of inconsistencies, of coherences”, had summarized Sébastien Schapira, deploring the tendency of the president of the court to see “of rationality” in all the acts of Essia Boularès.
In pre -trial detention for four years, Essia Boularès has made numerous stays in a specially developed hospital unit (UHSA), a structure dedicated to prisoners requiring psychiatric care. She expressed herself clearly during the debates, often fighting so as not to close her eyelids in the box due to the “heavy treatment” prescribed to her. “I just want to say sorry for everything,” she said on Thursday.