This is one of the best-known French criminal cases: Omar Raddad asks to be cleared. The investigation committee of the Court of Revision will decide on October 13 if the request for revision of the judgment of Omar Raddad is admissible, announced the Court of Cassation. A hearing before the investigative committee of the Court of Revision took place on Thursday, September 15, in the presence of Omar Raddad, behind closed doors. The 60-year-old Toulonnais is once again asking for a review of the trial.
>> Omar Raddad case: one “of the greatest miscarriages of justice of the 20th century” will be “rectified thanks to the Court of Revision”, says his lawyer
This former gardener was sentenced to 18 years in prison for the murder of his boss, Ghislaine Marchal, in 1991 in her villa in Mougins, in the Alpes-Maritimes. He had been incriminated by the famous inscription “Omar killed me“, traced with the victim’s blood, near his body.
Last May, the defense of Omar Raddad had presented during a hearing behind closed doors new elements in favor of his request for review, 28 years after his conviction for the murder of Ghislaine Marchal. In front of’in camera hearingOmar Raddad took the floor to once again proclaim his innocence, as he has done for 30 years.
“He wants the truth to come out. He doesn’t sleep and until he’s cleared he won’t be able to sleep, so insists Me Sylvie Noachovitch, lawyer for theformer gardener. Omar Raddad spoke to the commission to say what he had in his heart and his extremely strong wish that we find the name of the real assassin or real assassins. Because in the end, he could tell you that he wants to be cleared, but that’s not enough for him. He wants to know who killed Madame Marchal, because he loved her, he was close to her. For him, it is unbearable, intolerable to know in what absolutely atrocious conditions in which she was killed“, she tells the press, just in front of Omar Raddad, mute.
Because, in fact, these are indeed four different DNAs that were found at the crime scene. And thanks to scientific progress, we now know: none is that of Omar Raddad. The lawyer therefore requests new genetic expertise and also wants the investigating committee to hear new witnesses, and in particular the gendarmes, who were investigating the trail of a burglary, at Ghislaine Marchal’s. If this could exonerate the gardener, the Advocate General asks him that this investigation be dismissed. If the commission of instruction of the Court of Revision decides that Omar Raddad’s request is admissible, this will open the possibility of a new trial, an extremely rare event in France.