Fabien Azoulay was released from prison on Tuesday, November 2, 2021. In 2017, he was sentenced to 16 years and 8 months in prison in Turkey for importing narcotics. His sentence had been reduced to five years in France.
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Fabien Azoulay, a 43-year-old Franco-American, who was sentenced to prison in Turkey for importing narcotics, was released from the Health prison in Paris on Tuesday November 2, his lawyers told Franceinfo.
In 2017, he was sentenced to 16 years and 8 months in prison in Turkey, for importing narcotics. After four years in prison, he was repatriated on August 17 to France to serve the remainder of his sentence. This had been reduced to five years in prison by French justice, in accordance with French law.
“It is for Fabien the end of a long ordeal and for us a moving victory”, say his lawyers. This entrepreneur was convicted “for ordering a car rim cleaner online, not knowing that this product had recently been banned in this country”. He spent four years in prison, “an unjust and brutal detention which will mark him for life”. “This outcome owes everything to the obstinacy of his support, to legal rigor and diplomacy. Convinced of his innocence, we have never given in to the temptation of discouragement. For Fabien, it’s a new beginning”, continue his lawyers in a press release.
Carole-Olivia Montenot and François Zimeray had seized the justice of a request for adaptation then a modification of sentence which led to the release of Fabien Azoulay.
During a short trip to Istanbul in 2017, Fabien Azoulay was arrested for having bought a vial of GBL on the internet, when he wanted to make hair implants. This chemical is used as a paint solvent and, when ingested, transforms in the body into GHB, a drug which is increasingly used recreationally. According to his lawyers, he did not know that this product had been banned in Turkey six months earlier and had been delivered “in good faith”.
His lawyers had also denounced the conditions of imprisonment of their client, Jewish and homosexual, “victim of aggravated violence committed by a fellow prisoner” who had inflicted on him in 2018 “burns due to his homosexuality and belonging to the Jewish religion”.
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