The senator from Loire-Atlantique was indicted on suspicion of having drugged MP Sandrine Josso in order to sexually assault or rape her.
After the indictment on Friday, November 17 in the evening of Loire-Atlantique senator Joël Guerriau, suspected of having drugged MP Sandrine Josso without her knowledge to sexually assault or rape her, his lawyer, Me Rémi-Pierre Drai, explains on Saturday November 18 at the microphone of France Bleu Loire Océan that it is a “manipulation error” of the elected official who “really had no intention of administering [la] substance”and is not “absolutely not a sexual predator.”
According to Me Rémi-Pierre Drai, as he explained “spontaneously” in police custody, during the confrontation with the alleged victim and in front of the investigating judge, the senator “never wanted to administer a substance to her friend, her work colleague, with a view to committing rape or sexual assault. Never. It was a handling error.” The lawyer explains: “He had acquired this substance whose nature he did not know. He did not know that it was ecstasy. Someone in the Senate had given him a euphoric drug in the middle of the electoral campaign, a difficult campaign for the senatorial elections. He had kept it.”
A very trying senatorial campaign context
The campaign context explains, according to his lawyer, the desire to consume a substance because the senator had felt “great fatigue after the electoral campaign. His wife accompanied him to the Nantes station. They are a very united couple. Being in Paris is not always easy. His cat died the same day, Monday.” He also saw a friend “having undergone a third chemotherapy, and who in my opinion, on the day I speak to you, died. All this had greatly shaken him.”
In the version of events defended by Joël Guerriau, he assures that he had intended to consume this substance on Monday evening, November 13, after a day “extremely complicated”put the product in a champagne glass, before deciding to “do not consume it”. He would have put the cup away, without removing the substance. When he received Sandrine Josso, “he served the champagne in this glass”forgetting “that there was this substance in the glass”.
She drank the wrong cup. That’s all.
Me Rémi-Pierre Drai, lawyer for Joël Guerriaufranceinfo
“Joël Guerriau really had no intention of administering this substance. Can you imagine? To a fellow MP whom he has known for ten years, whom he has always seen on a friendly basis, whom he has never flirted with”assures Me Rémi-Pierre Drai, for whom “in fact, there is neither ambush nor a desire to drug her”. According to his lawyer, this explanation can “appear surprising[e]drawn[e] by the hair, whatever you want, but there are not only smooth, simple, simplistic truths. That’s his version and I completely believe him.” He also ensures that there is “many inconsistencies also on the complainant’s side.”