The murderer of police officer Eric Masson, Ilias Akoudad, is sentenced to 30 years in prison with a 20-year security sentence

Ilias Akoudad, 22, confessed during the trial to having killed police officer Eric Masson.

Ilias Akoudad, murderer of Brigadier Eric Masson, was sentenced, Friday March 1, to 30 years of imprisonment with a 20-year security sentence by the Vaucluse Assize Court. The court retained the aggravating circumstance of murder of a person holding public authority, a point which had occupied a large part of the debates during the two weeks of hearing. He was also convicted of attempted murder of Eric Masson’s colleague, while the two police officers were participating in a banal operation to control a deal point.

The 22-year-old young man confessed during the trial to having killed the police officer. He asked “pardon” Friday, just before the Vaucluse Assize Court withdrew to deliver its verdict. The Attorney General, Florence Galtier, had requested the maximum penalty incurred for intentional homicide of a police officer: life imprisonment with a safety period of 22 years, in the face of “dangerousness” of the accused and to “protect society”.

“Absolutely impossible” to take them for drug dealers

During two weeks of hearing, where dozens of police officers were there every day to support the family, the prosecution and the defense engaged in a bitter battle around the possible aggravating circumstance of a murder committed against a person holding public authority. But the trial will not have made it possible to answer a question: why did Eric Masson, father of two children, die on May 5, 2021?

That day, around 6 p.m., he was on a surveillance operation at a deal point in Avignon. With Romain, a colleague, they are in civilian clothes when they meet Ilias Akoudad. A small repeat drug dealer, he dropped out of school at 14 and lives with a mother described as permissive. “What are you guys doing, are you coaling? [vendez de la drogue] ?”he says to the two police officers who have just checked a drug addict.

In his partial confession on Monday, after almost three years of denials, Ilias Akoudad finally admitted, in the face of a damning case, to having shot Eric Masson. But, he assures us, he took him for a drug dealer. “I’m an idiot, I wanted to look good.” It was “absolutely impossible” to take them for competing dealers, brushed aside the attorney general in her muscular indictment, considering that the brigadier had been “executed without warning, by an individual drunk with violence, proud of the gesture accomplished”.