The case had shocked and fueled the debate on the consequences of school bullying. A year after the death of Alisha, 14, whose body was found in the Seine in Argenteuil (Val-d’Oise), two of her classmates, aged 15 at the time of the events, are on trial for “assassination” in Pontoise, from Monday 3 to Thursday 6 April. The trial will be held behind closed doors. The two teenagers face up to 20 years in prison. Franceinfo reminds you of the main points of the file.
What had happened?
On March 8, 2021, Alisha had found J., one of the two accused, on a quay of the Seine in Argenteuil, an isolated place at the foot of an overpass of the A15 motorway. An ambush set by the two suspects: the second, T., was waiting hidden behind a pillar, according to Eric Corbaux, the Pontoise prosecutor, based on their statements in police custody.
The boy then violently struck the victim, punching him and then kicking him in the head. Before throwing the young girl into the Seine with her co-defendant. In March 2021, the prosecutor explained that the two teenagers “wanted to erase the traces of the violence committed”.
Alisha was then still conscious. According to the prosecutor, the defendants acknowledged that her eyes were open. The autopsy revealed “significant hematomas on the skull” but concluded to “a death by asphyxiation which can be consistent with death by drowning”.
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After the events, T. returned to his home. There, he told his mother that he and his girlfriend, J., had just come from “hit a girl” and that she was “fallen into the Seine”. It was this mother who informed the Argenteuil police station the same day, at the start of the evening, after discovering her son’s bloodstained clothes.
At the same time, Alisha’s mother, worried that she had no news, reported her missing to the police. The body of the teenager was found in the evening, in the Seine, at the foot of the place where she had been attacked. T. and J., who had taken refuge with an acquaintance, were arrested during the night. Two days later, on March 10, they were indicted and remanded in custody.
What was Alisha’s relationship with the two defendants?
Alisha, T. and J. were “three friends at the start”, had explained the prosecutor at the time of the facts. They had met a few months earlier, at the start of the school year, in their class at a vocational high school in Argenteuil. “Then there were romantic relationships between each other”, according to Eric Corbaux. First between Alisha and T., then between T. and J. Despite this scenario, “Ihe two young girls had kept a friendly relationship”which then escalated.
In the weeks before her death, Alisha had had her phone hacked. T. and J. had posted photos on the social network Snapchat showing the girl in her underwear. An altercation had also opposed the victim and J. in their high school. The establishment had temporarily excluded the two respondents for a “situation of tension between these three students”. T. and J. were to go to the disciplinary council on March 9, 2021, the day after the events.
During a white march organized a week later, bringing together more than 2,000 people, banners proclaimed “No to revenge porn” and “Stop bullying”. The government had reacted to this affair, the Minister in charge of Citizenship Marlène Schiappa announcing the creation of“an anti-harassment committee”. An announcement that does not seem to have materialized since.
What are the two teenagers risking?
The two defendants had been indicted for “murder”, the investigation having brought to light elements suggesting premeditation. According to The Parisianthe investigation brought to light exchanges in which the two teenagers evoked an assassination and online research by T. on the sentence incurred by the murderer of a minor.
Lawyers for the defendants did not speak ahead of the trial, which begins Monday. “It would be good not to judge these children guilty at a press conference”had written on Twitter the lawyer Frank Berton, who defends the boy, in March 2021. “There is an instruction, there will be a trial, my client has the right to a defense.”
Being 15 years old at the material time, J. and T. do not incur life imprisonment, but a maximum sentence of 20 years. The criminal majority is set at 18 years. Detained in specific quarters for minors, they will be tried by a juvenile court, whose hearings always take place behind closed doors.