Paris: 27 years imprisonment for man who killed and dismembered his wife
Paris criminal court has sentenced Lahdar Matoug, 53, to 27 years in prison for the murder of his wife Asia, whose body he severed before abandoning the remains in Buttes-Chaumont park.
Paris: 27 years imprisonment for man who killed and dismembered his wife
Paris criminal court imposed a 27-year prison sentence on Lahdar Matoug, a 53-year-old man, found guilty of murdering his wife Asia and mutilating her lifeless body. The victim's remains were subsequently dispersed in plastic bags in Buttes-Chaumont park in the French capital.
During five days of hearings, the two defence lawyers, including Gérard Tsolakian, failed to convince the jury of the absence of premeditation on the part of their client. According to forensic medical experts, the wife was strangled for several minutes, not a few seconds as the defendant claimed.
The couple, originally from Algeria and parents of three children, lived in the Paris suburbs. Their daily life was marked by financial difficulties and the progressive deterioration of their conjugal relationship. The prosecutor described an ordinary existence, where the spouses no longer communicated except by electronic messages, locked in the isolation of their routine.
What particularly caught the attention of the court were the acts committed after death. The man, nicknamed "the zen" and reputed to be peaceful by those around him, placed his wife's body on the family sofa. He asked the children not to wake their mother, claiming she was tired and ill.
The next day, he used an angle grinder to sever the body. He then transported the different parts in plastic bags to Buttes-Chaumont park, as well as to Bobigny, in the suburbs, where he abandoned the bag containing the torso in an empty premises.
The defence invoked "depersonalisation" and "psychological dissociation" to explain this behaviour. Experts mentioned a state of derealisation. However, the prosecution rejected this theory, emphasising the prior purchase of the cutting tool, the journeys back and forth between the family home in Montreuil and the park, as well as the messages sent to the victim after her disappearance — "Yes, Asia, where are you?" — and the confession made during the third police custody, two weeks later.
"No depersonalisation, no man under the influence of alcohol. On the contrary, a person perfectly grounded in reality," concluded the representative of the public prosecution, according to the report published by in.gr.
The defendant was found guilty of murder, although the exact reasons that prompted him to act were not fully clarified during the trial.
Source: In.gr