The man who admitted to having killed his wife found dismembered in the Buttes-Chaumont park, in Paris, was indicted on Saturday for murder by spouse and placed in pre-trial detention, said his lawyer and the prosecution. “Despite the post-mortem facts, today it is no longer the qualification of assassination which is retained but that of murder of a spouse”, underlined before the press his lawyer, Me Dominique Beyreuther-Minkov, specifying that his client contested having wanted to kill his wife, Assia, 46 years old. The prosecution had opened on February 17 a judicial investigation for assassination, attack on the integrity of a corpse and concealment of a corpse.
The investigating judge in charge of this case reclassified the facts, considering, in the light of his statements, that Youcef M., born in 1972, had not premeditated his action.
“The whole family is in shock”
“My client, who collapsed, explained himself as humanly as he could” while in police custody, said Me Beyreuther-Minkov, presenting the couple as “united, married for 26 years with three children” . Youcef M. admitted to the investigators of the Criminal Brigade, seized of the investigation, to have killed his wife. “The whole family is in shock and in a state of amazement. They have no perspective on the situation and are still struggling to realize”, reacted to AFP Me Antoine Ory, lawyer for the family of the victim and of the couple’s three children.
Husband reported missing wife
According to Me Beyreuther-Minkov, Youcef M. had reported to the police on February 3 the disappearance of his wife from the family apartment located in Montreuil (Seine-Saint-Denis). On social networks, he had mentioned his absence from January 31. On February 6, he was heard by the brigade for the repression of delinquency against the person (BRDP) which then launched an investigation. A plastic bag containing the pelvis and thighs of this woman, subsequently identified through the analysis of fingerprints, was discovered under a pile of green waste in Buttes-Chaumont by municipal parks and gardens officials on February 13 . The following day, other remains, including the head, had been found during a thorough search of the park.
Several media had revealed a few days later that the husband’s statements, deemed incoherent, had aroused the suspicions of the police. The number of feminicides increased by 20% in France in 2021 compared to the previous year, with 122 women killed by their spouse or ex-spouse, against 102 in 2020, according to figures from the Ministry of the Interior.