Johanna Blanes, 24, was raped and strangled in a pedestrian tunnel under a train track in July 2019.
Hussein Ahmed, a 35-year-old Syrian refugee, was sentenced on Thursday June 9 to 30 years in prison by the Landes Assize Court for the rape and murder of Johanna Blanes, a 24-year-old mother of a child. 19 months, reports South West . He also received a permanent ban from French territory. The accused and the prosecution now have ten days to make a possible appeal.
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The case dates back to the morning of Sunday July 7, 2019. The body of Johanna Blanes, who was returning from an evening at a disco, was found by a passerby in a pedestrian tunnel under a railway line linking Mont-de-Marsan to Saint-Pierre. -du-Mont, where she has lived for several years. The autopsy establishes that she was the victim of a “mechanical asphyxiation», corresponding to a strangulation. The young woman was also raped. “She was like disjointed. His jaw was dislocated. In 27 years of career, people in impossible states, I have seen some, but there, she was massacred. Blood was pouring from the back of his skull, from his ears, from his nose, from his mouth“, testified a policeman, quoted by South Westduring the trial.
Victim’s cell phone found at suspect’s home
The Syrian political refugee, Hussein Ahmed, was arrested by the judicial police in Mont-de-Marsan four days after the crime. Genetic elements collected on the body of the victim had made it possible to go back to this man, already registered in the national automated file of genetic fingerprints (FNAEG).
At his home, investigators found the victim’s personal effects, including his cell phone. They had also found Johanna Blanes’ SIM card on him. The Syrian refugee was known to the police and the courts for acts of domestic violence against his 16-year-old wife: he had been sentenced in 2018 to eight months in prison suspended. The same year, in January, he had tried to strangle a teenager with headphones who was leaving the Morcenx-la-Nouvelle station (Landes), near her high school. “I will kill you“, he had notably shouted at her.
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