Attorney of Moroccan gardener to ask for trial revision
Morocco-France, Judicial, 1/27/1999

Jacques Verges, a French attorney, said he will ask the cassation court to revise the trial of Omar Raddad, a 37-year old Moroccan gardener who was sentenced in 1994 to an 18-year prison term for a murder he has always denied and who was released last September after serving 7 years of the 18 year-prison term.

Raddad was granted a "partial" amnesty by French president Jacques Chirac.

On the basis of a 41-page document, containing testimonies collected by a private detective and counter-expertise, the attorney will file his request to have a new trial.

The attorney will send to judiciary authorities results of a graphological analysis of the message "Omar m'a tuer" supposedly written with her own blood by the victim, Raddad's boss, Ghislaine Marshal. The lawyer said the analysis reveals that it was not Marshal who wrote the message that accuses Raddad of killing her.

Raddad's indictment in the murder of his boss, Ghislaine Marshal, was disputed by several intellectual and judiciary circles in France who criticized the lack of evidence. His lawyer, Jacques Verges, decried racist motivations behind his indictment.

In order for the case to be revised, the French law stipulates that the defense should submit a new fact or element likely to challenge the guiltiness of the indicted person. Up to now, out of 37 cases filed since 1989, the court only changed the ruling in one criminal case.

Previous Stories:
  French TV channel 3 broadcasts program on freed Moroccan gardener   (9/24/1998)
  Moroccan gardener imprisoned for murder in France to be freed   (9/2/1998)

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