The 37-year-old star was not leading off, Monday, February 20, in the dock. Finely trimmed beard, neatly styled hair, black sweater and pants, white shirt, the popular Moroccan singer Saad Lamjarred was dressed like a schoolboy on the first day of his trial before the Paris Assize Court for aggravated rape – by the consumption of alcohol and narcotics – and violence against a young woman, Laura P., in October 2016.
With a tense smile on his lips, he, as throughout the investigation, denied the facts after the reading of the order for dismissal by the president of the court, Frédérique Aline. “I have waited for this moment for almost seven years, to say everything you want to hear about this case which has hurt me and my loved ones a lot”he said, in response to the magistrate who asked him if he was still contesting the facts.
If this case took nearly seven years to reach court, it is because it has already been fiercely disputed. The first referral order of 2019 had reclassified the facts as aggravated sexual abuse, punishable by the criminal court. Seized by the civil party, the investigating chamber had reversed this dismissal in January 2020, ordering a trial at the assizes for rape with violence. Then the case went to cassation in April 2020, where the criminal chamber referred again to the court of appeal which upheld the referral for aggravated rape in March 2021. A new appeal was lodged before the Court of Cassation, but the latter declared it inadmissible, paving the way for a trial at the assizes. The difference is significant because, for this count, Saad Lamjarred faces twenty years in prison, as well as five years for the violence that accompanied the alleged rape.
What is at stake in this trial is commensurate with the audience of Saad Lamjarred, whose clips have millions of views in the Arab world. His popularity is such that the King of Morocco had allocated his lawyer, Eric Dupond-Moretti, who had meanwhile become Minister of Justice, to him.
Under judicial control after seven months in prison and six months of house arrest under electronic bracelet, Saad Lamjarred, 37, appears free. A few meters from him, his alleged victim, Laura P., now 27, cried several times during this trying first day.
Radically divergent versions
The Moroccan singing star and the young Iséroise who came to Paris to look for work met on the night of October 25 to 26, 2016, in a club in the Champs-Elysées district. He is there for a concert that he must give three days later at the Palais des Congrès. They do not know each other but sympathize and like each other. Lamjarred and her friends propose to continue the night elsewhere, she accompanies them. They land in a couple’s room at the Intercontinental Hotel.
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