Vanesa Campos, a 36-year-old Peruvian prostitute, was killed in 2018 in the Bois de Boulogne. The two main defendants have always blamed each other for the crime.
The Paris Assize Court on Saturday sentenced two Egyptians, Mahmoud Kadri and Karim Ibrahim, to 22 years of criminal imprisonment for the murder in 2018 in the Bois de Boulogne of Vanesa Campos, a transgender sex worker of Peruvian origin.
Read alsoMurder of a prostitute in the Bois de Boulogne: the trail of a stolen police weapon
The sentences pronounced after more than nine hours of deliberation go beyond the requisitions of the prosecution, which had requested Thursday 20 years of imprisonment against Mahmoud Kadri and 15 years against Karim Ibrahim.
The court found the two main defendants guilty of “organized gang murder“, a crime that they have always contested and for which they blame themselves. Advocate General Olivier Auféril had requested for Karim Ibrahim a requalification as “complicityof murder. Located at the opposite extreme in the box, Mahmoud Kadri, 24, and Karim Ibrahim, 29, seemed to take the hit when the verdict was announced, then remaining seated for long minutes.
During the proceedings, they admitted to having been part of a band of thieves who robbed the clients of South American trans prostitutes and to having wanted the facts in the evening “to fightwith the protectors they had hired to defend themselves from their actions. In their final words on Saturday morning before the court retired to deliberate, they both said to each other, “sorryof what happened on the night of August 16 to 17, 2018.
Sentencing of six other defendants
The court also sentenced six other defendants aged 23 to 34, who had been tried alongside them since January 11. One of them, who was also being prosecuted for murder, was sentenced to six years’ imprisonment for intentional violence resulting in death without intention of causing it.
Four other men were sentenced to terms ranging from three years in prison, two of which were suspended, to six years in prison for their participation in the punitive expedition during which Vanesa Campos was killed. An eighth man was sentenced – in accordance with the requisitions of the Advocate General – to a five-year prison sentence for having participated in the theft of the murder weapon, a pistol stolen from a police officer a week before the facts.
Vanesa Campos, a 36-year-old Peruvian prostitute, was killed near her workplace, in one of the most remote places in the Bois de Boulogne, devoid of public lighting, after finding herself facing a group of at least a dozen young men. For the prosecution, they met there to “regain control of the territory“, armed in particular with the pistol, a truncheon, knives, tear gas canisters and tree branches found on the spot.