His name is little known in France but he is an icon of pop music throughout the Middle East. Moroccan singer Saad Lamjarred is on trial before the Paris Assize Court for aggravated rape. The facts date back to 2016.
A very maintained figure, impeccably tailored clothes, a dazzling smile which he rarely seems to depart from, Saad Lamjarred appears swaying in most of his clips. The recipe for his success, since his remarkable participation in the biggest tele-hook of Lebanese TV in 2007? A neat look, then, but also sweet lyrics speaking of seduction, and modernized oriental rhythms that make you want to move.
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Despite his legal setbacks, the Moroccan pop star continues to multiply successes. Coming from a family of artists close to power, Saad Lamjarred benefited from the support of the king when in October 2016, he was placed in police custody, accused of rape in Paris. Mohammed VI even then undertook to pay his legal fees and put him in touch with his own counsel, a certain Eric Dupond-Moretti.
The royal support seems a little less obvious seven years later, for the one who faces 20 years in prison. His lawyers today are the tenors of the Parisian bar Thierry Herzog and Jean-Marc Fedida. If twice at the end of the investigation, the prosecution took requisitions of dismissal for the qualifications of rape, retaining only the sexual assault, it is for rape that the prince of Arab pop is finally judged.
The facts date back to October 2016
Laura P. recounts having met the singer on the evening of October 25 in a posh nightclub in Paris, The Matignon. The young Frenchwoman was 20 years old at the time and he was 31. They danced, continued the evening with a couple of friends in their room at the Intercontinental hotel. Around 6 a.m., the young Iséroise follows the singer to the hotel Marriott Champs-Elysées, where he resides. She explains that she understood that the couple of friends had to join them. Nothing will happen.
Saad Lamjarred had consumed alcohol and cocaine. He kisses the young woman then, when he tries to repeat the gesture, she slips away. Laura P. explains that she had no plans to have a sexual relationship with him then. According to her, it was agreed that they discover more the next day, by going together to visit Paris. She says that faced with her resistance, the singer violently grabbed her by the hair, hit her several times before finally raping her. When she finally flees the hotel room, Laura P. has her t-shirt torn. The maid who picked her up described a shocked, crying and still frightened young girl. The doctors who examined her quickly found bruises and hematomas in several places on her body. And a mixture of her DNA and the one she accuses of raping her was highlighted on her underwear.
Saad Lamjarred was very quickly placed in police custody and put all his energy into contesting the charges. According to him, it was Laura P. who, as they got closer, started scratching him for no reason. It’s alone “by hurting oneself with something”, that the young woman would have ended up with a swollen upper lip. And if his t-shirt was found torn, it is according to him because he tried to hold her back in order to appease her when she left her room. At the end of this police custody, the Moroccan singer spent six months in pre-trial detention in Fleury-Mérogis prison.
At the time, the Moroccan Minister of Culture said in his country’s press that he was closely following the developments in this affair. In April 2017, Saad Lamjarred was released, but had to wear an electronic bracelet. Since then, he has been forced to stay on French territory, however benefiting from specific authorizations to leave France for professional or family reasons. This is how he went a few months ago to Morocco to get married, or even to the Maldives recently with his wife.
Other ongoing proceedings
For the trial which begins Monday, February 20 and should last five days before the assizes of Paris, the pop star has against him the other files in which he was accused of sexual assault or rape in conditions very close to those described by the young Frenchwoman. From 2010, when he was only 25 years old and did not have the same success as today, Saad Lamjarred had to face the accusations of a young American. This one had explained having dined with him in New York, then having followed him to his home. She had then refused his advances, which according to her testimony had caused her to be beaten and raped.
Saad Lamjarred had been arrested, imprisoned and then released on bail. He faced up to 25 years in prison but left the United States never to return. There will finally be in this file the abandonment of the proceedings after a transaction made with the young woman. Transaction for which the amount is unknown. In November 2016, a young Franco-Moroccan also filed a rape complaint in Paris. She evoked facts which would have occurred in Casablanca, 18 months earlier in the apartment of the singer. “By fear”, the young woman then withdrew her complaint. The judges ultimately dismissed the case.
Finally, Saad Lamjarred will have to be tried in another rape case. There is no date yet for that hearing. It will take place in front of the assizes of the Var. A young woman accuses the artist of having raped her in a nightclub in Saint-Tropez. Facts that took place in 2018, so two years after those for which he is on trial this week.
Despite these legal setbacks, Saad Lamjarred remains popular in Morocco. His fans denounce on social networks in particular lies, a conspiracy, talk about rumors invented by women who do not know what to do with their lives and just want to extract money from him. Everything that happens to him would in short be the ransom of glory. Fans who have gone so far as to threaten on the internet and even by telephone the young Laura P. after her complaint and the incarceration at the end of 2016 of their protege. “I received so many insults and death threats. I fear for my safety”testified the young woman in a video posted online at the end of 2017.
Today, Laura P, according to her lawyer Jean-Marc Descoubes, is still very marked, but above all determined as the trial approaches, for which she will not ask for a closed session.