The Court of Revision decided to annul the conviction of Farid El Haïry. It’s only the 12e conviction review cases since 1945.
SourceAFP
© Lauriane Delanoe / France Info / Radio France / Maxppp
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Lhe Court of Revision took the extremely rare decision on Thursday to annul the conviction for rape of a minor pronounced in 2003 against Farid El Haïry, who spent nearly a year in detention for a crime he did not commit.
This decision, which makes this 41-year-old man the twelfth known case of review of an assize conviction since 1945, follows the retraction of his accuser who confessed, at the end of 2017, to the judicial authorities to have invented the facts. “Nothing remains in the charge of Farid El Hairy”, declared the president of the Court of Revision, Nicolas Bonnal, adding that this conviction was canceled without a new trial. “The case is over with this decision, which clears you of any conviction. »
“After 24 years of suffering, I don’t really know what to say,” said Farid El Hairy, 41, at the end of the hearing. “All I can say is that I don’t wish anyone to go through what I went through. In 1998, then 15 years old, Julie D. had accused him of rape and sexual assault. During his police custody, then 17 years old, he had never ceased to proclaim his innocence. ” It’s impossible ! I’ve never had sex! “he had declared in particular.
The victim was covering for his brother
Returned to the assize court for minors in the North, Farid El Hairy was found guilty and sentenced in December 2003 to five years in prison, including four years and two months suspended, enough to cover his period of pre-trial detention. Registered in the judicial file of perpetrators of sexual and violent offences, he is then forced to report to the gendarmerie every year. As for her parents, they are ordered to pay 17,000 euros in damages to the complainant.
A dramatic change nearly fifteen years later: in October 2017, Julie D. wrote to the Douai prosecutor to admit having invented this story from scratch. “I confess to having lied to you,” she wrote. Mr. Farid E. is guilty of nothing […] I was locked in my own lie and stuck in the grip of family secrecy. “Between her 8 and 12 years, she writes, Julie D. was in fact the victim of” repeated incest on the part of (her) big brother “against which she ends up filing a complaint. However, it will be necessary to wait until the summer of 2022 for the authorities to inform Mr. El Hairy of this reversal.