Sami M., 29, is the keystone of the case against Philippe Goncalves. Caner / stock.adobe.com
The Jehovah’s Witness had attempted to murder his wife during an alleged romantic picnic, which miraculously survived.
He was thinking of getting a few tickets for a little scheme, he finds himself at the assizes for an assassination attempt. At the trial of a Jehovah’s Witness suspected of having wanted to execute his wife, his acolyte charged the main defendant on Friday.
Leaning on the bar, fitted jacket and ear pierced with a ring, Sami M., 29, is the keystone of the case against Philippe Goncalves, who denies the facts. The two men have been on trial since Tuesday at the assizes of Seine-et-Marne for the attempted assassination of the wife of the second, during a picnic in the park, one evening in June 2017.
“Get a Bag”
Handyman for a subcontractor of Philippe Goncalves, Sami M. and the head of the construction industry, ten years his senior, meet on a construction site. A show-off living off odd jobs, loving girls and money, the young man from the estate is not the type to disdain a “small ticket“. When the Jehovah’s Witness offers him 500 euros for “retrieve a bagand make it disappear, he agrees, no questions asked. Sami M., who appears free, insists that he knew nothing about the assassination plan and only understood it too late.
After several aborted meetings, Philippe Goncalves asks her to meet him one evening in front of the Noisiel park. The Jehovah’s Witness took his wife there for a romantic picnic, officially intended to pick up the pieces in a couple going through turbulence. The boss picks him up at the entrance and hides him behind a tree in a wooded part of the park. Telling him to wait there, he leaves. Sami plays on his phone to kill time. A gunshot erupts. “He comes running towards me, crossing the forest, with a jacket on him, a scarf, a sock on his left hand. He hurries to undress, puts the things in the bag he is going to hand me, when we hear the cry of a woman“says Sami M.
Miraculous
A few meters away, Goncalves’ wife has just been shot in the head but is alive. A miracle. “She’s not dead, you have to finish her!“says the entrepreneur, in possession of a gun. Sami suddenly realizes the situation and refuses to do it.
So Philippe Goncalves “thinks quickly and says to me + well, shoot me +. I came to pick up a bag, I find myself having to shoot someone!he exclaims. “Under pressure“, he obeys and wounds Goncalves by bullet in the left shoulder, in order to make up the crime in aggression. “He has no signs of extreme pain. He is in pain but he remains totally lucid. He puts the jacket and the weapon in the bag. At that moment he gives me the bag and tells me “come on, get out!“Sami will get rid of them, the police will never find them. Confused by the telephone blockage, he was arrested a year later. In police custody, he immediately confesses.
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A version that, in the box of the accused, Philippe Goncalves denies from start to finish, as since the start of the procedure. In a long, dense monologue, the witness reaffirms that his couple was attacked by a mysterious armed shooter, posing the hypothesis of a link with an obscure dispute with his subcontractor. “For a long time, I thought they wanted to kill us. Today, I think they wanted to intimidate us, scare us, and it got out of hand“says in a soft voice Philippe Goncalves, checkered shirt, baldness lightening the top of the skull.
The prosecution considers that this devotee, tormented by an attraction for women, would have liked to start a new life with another without risking the excommunication of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the rigorous religious movement which permeated his whole life. Only one escape: to be a widower. The requisitions and the verdict are expected on Monday.