This counter-expertise follows another which had concluded that Mr. Ahmed-Osman’s discernment at the time of the facts, in April 2020 in the Drôme, but not to his abolition.
By Christophe Ayad
The alleged perpetrator of the attack on the knife of Romans-sur-Isère (Drôme), who had caused two dead and five wounded on April 4, 2020, will he be criminally irresponsible? Revealed by Le Parisien and consulted by MO12345lemonde, a psychiatric counter-expertise by Abdallah Ahmed-Osman, the Sudanese refugee of 36 years under investigation and detained for these facts qualified as terrorists, concludes that his discernment was abolition at the time of his transition to the act.
The document, rendered on November 7, 2022, is signed by two renowned psychiatrists working at the Hospitals in Saint-Anne (Paris) and Villejuif (Val-de-Marne). This counter-expertise follows a first expertise on December 5, 2020, which had concluded that the discernment of Mr. Ahmed-Osman was implemented at the time of the facts but not to his abolition, thus making him justiciable and accessible to a Criminal sanction.
The new expertise comes to complexify a case that is at the edge of psychiatry and terrorism. On April 4, 2020 in the morning, in full first confinement, Abdallah Ahmed-Osman leaves his home, in the old town, and goes to a tobacco office where he assaulted the tobacconist and his wife with a knife. He then goes to a butcher’s shop where he passes over the stall to seize a chopper. He attacks and kills a client. In the street, he asks a passerby if he is a Muslim; The latter replies that he is French and is injured in the back. In an adjacent street, he crosses an individual out to open his shutters: he kills him before the eyes of his child. Further on, he hurts a man who is at his window, then attacks a woman in the entrance to his home. Police apprehends him 20 minutes after the start of his murderous journey. She finds him prostrate reciting the profession of Muslim faith. Investigators will find at home a short text in Arabic where he implores the “forgiveness” due to any “fighter” and says that he can no longer live “in this country of disbelievers”.
“hearing hallucinations”
In police custody, Abdallah Ahmed-Osman does not express any remorse. He evokes “a drama”, “a disaster” or “an accident”. He speaks of “destiny” and explains having defended himself against an assault. To psychiatrists, he explains “having started to present hearing hallucinations for a month before the facts” according to the report. “It has become more and more present, he says. At first, they were there in the evening and then all day I was very afraid at home.”
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