Twenty-seven years in prison for husband who killed and dismembered his wife in Paris
A 53-year-old man has been sentenced to 27 years in prison by the Paris assizes for murdering his wife and then dismembering her body at their home in Montreuil before discarding the remains in a public garden in the capital.
Twenty-seven years in prison for husband who killed and dismembered his wife in Paris
The jurors at the Paris assizes condemned Lakhdar Matoug to twenty-seven years of imprisonment on Friday 10 July. The middle-aged man was prosecuted for having killed his wife Assia in late January 2023, then dismembered her body using an angle grinder. The pieces had been scattered in bin bags in the Buttes-Chaumont park, whilst the torso had been abandoned on wasteland in Bobigny.
The judge presiding over the hearing described the act as a "sacrilege" added to the initial crime. The sentence corresponded exactly to what the public prosecutor's representative had demanded.
Over the course of five days of proceedings, the exact motive could not be fully elucidated. The defendant claimed that a violent quarrel had driven him to strangle his wife. Medical examiners, however, determined that the compression had lasted several minutes, contradicting his version of a brief and involuntary act.
The macabre aspect of the case provoked horror. This father of a family, described by those around him as having a peaceful temperament — he was nicknamed "the zen one" — told the children that their mother was asleep because she was unwell, when she was already lifeless on the family sofa. The following day, he went to a home improvement store to obtain a cutting tool, before proceeding to dismember her. He made two trips from Montreuil to the park in the 19th arrondissement to deposit the remains.
The defendant's legal team put forward expert reports citing a loss of contact with reality and a psychological breakdown. The prosecution contested this line of defence, pointing to the methodical preparation: the purchase of the angle grinder, repeated trips, the reported missing person notification to the police, text messages sent to the deceased, and confessions obtained after fifteen days in custody.
Source: franceinfo
Source: Google News LU FR