Nordahl Lelandais: this secret book to which he had access in prison and which he wanted to ban

Michel Moatti almost never saw his book on bookstore shelves: as soon as he became aware of it, from the back of his cell, while he was in pre-trial detention awaiting his trial in assizes, Nordahl Lelandais tried to have it banned. And for good reason, the book, which deals with the personality of the person concerned, was to appear before the trials respective for the murders of Arthur Noyer and Maëlys De Araujo.

Michel Moatti: “We received my publisher and I, each a registered letter”

This is Alain Jakubovicz, lawyer for Nordahl Lelandais who was responsible for sending these missives to prevent the exit of “Report on Nordahl L.” in 2018, when Michel Moatti’s investigative book is about to be distributed in bookstores. “We received, my publisher and I, each a registered letter”, remembers the writer enjoining them both to give up this project under penalty of legal proceedings, and a possible condemnation to pay him damages. The reason ? Nordahl Lelandais accuses the publisher and the writer of undermining his presumption of innocencegiven that he had not yet been tried.

Both therefore give up releasing this first version, although they never knew how Nordahl Lelandais had been able to obtain it, since it was not yet available in bookstores. The second version was published in March 2022 after the double conviction of Nordahl Lelandais. According to the author, this version is much more interesting, because he enriched it and was also able to correspond, then meet the mother of Maëlys De Araujo, “It was rich, but it was heavy too… confided the writer to the journalists of RTL. To be in the company of Maëlys’ mother, who has been through all this, to ask her to correct the moments when I make her think and therefore also to get into her head a little, it was both exciting and difficult. But I don’t regret it, I learned a lot.”