Paris: 27 years' imprisonment for man who killed and dismembered his wife
A 53-year-old man has been sentenced to 27 years in prison by the Paris assize court for the murder of his wife, whose body he dismembered before scattering the remains in a park in the capital.
Paris: 27 years' imprisonment for man who killed and dismembered his wife
The Paris assize court has imposed a sentence of 27 years' imprisonment on Lahdar Matoug, a 53-year-old man, for the murder of his wife Asia. After suffocating his wife during an argument, he severed the corpse using an angle grinder and threw the pieces into plastic bags in Buttes-Chaumont park in the north-east of the French capital.
According to the submissions of the prosecutor, reported by Newsit, the couple, originally from Algeria and parents of three children, lived in the Paris suburbs. Their daily life was beset by debt and the deterioration of their marital relations. The two spouses communicated only by electronic messages.
During the trial, which took place over five days, the two defence lawyers failed to convince the jury of their client's lack of murderous intent. They argued a phenomenon of "depersonalisation" and "psychological disconnection", contending that the accused had "neither prepared the crime nor developed a material plan".
This argument was rejected by the public prosecution. The prosecution emphasised that the convicted man had purchased an angle grinder to cut up the body, made two return trips between the family home in Montreuil and Buttes-Chaumont park, sent messages to his wife pretending to search for her — "Yes, Asia, where are you?" — and eventually confessed during his third police custody, two weeks later.
The prosecutor described a man "very grounded in reality", ruling out any impairment of judgement under the influence of alcohol. Forensic experts estimated that the strangulation had lasted several minutes, not a few seconds as Matoug claimed.
Source: Newsit.gr