Two women accused of having killed and dismembered the companion of one of them were sentenced on Saturday in Rouen, in the west of France, to 22 and 17 years of imprisonment, at the end of a trial where the defense had denounced the violence inflicted by the victim on his companion.
Céline Vasselin, 35-year-old beautician, and Jessica Adam, 39, a client who became a “girlfriend”, had been tried since Monday before the assizes for having on the night of November 3 to 4, 2018 in the suburbs of Rouen, drugged, killed stabbed and dismembered Sliman Amara, with whom Céline Vasselin had had a son three years earlier.
“I must be punished for what I did,” said Céline Vasselin before the verdict. Jessica Adam asked for forgiveness for her actions, saying she was “sincerely sorry, for Sliman, for his first wife, for his family, for his children”.
The Advocate General had requested Friday thirty years of imprisonment against Céline Vasselin, and 25 years against Jessica Adam.
“I do not deny the difficulties of Ms. Vasselin in her life as a couple with Sliman Amara, but these keys to understanding will never justify an assassination”, declared the general counsel Ms. Martin-Belliard during her indictment on Friday.
Me Frank Berton, lawyer for the victim’s sister, said he was “very surprised” by “the leniency of the Rouen Assize Court”.
Friday, the two thirty-somethings each tried to minimize their responsibility in this macabre project. Jessica Adam felt that she had been “well fooled” by her friend, who, for her part, attributed to her an active role in the crime, Jessica Adam having dealt “the first blow of a butcher’s sheet”.
The last argument of the defense of Ms. Vasselin focused on the physical and psychological violence allegedly suffered by her client in her relationship with Mr. Amara.