Belgian Court Tries Moroccan Man for Fatal Stabbing of Wife Amid Divorce

Mokhtar Ammari and Fatima Khayer quickly formalized their union after meeting in Morocco in 2006. "She married him not to have papers, but because she was in love with him," said Friday the lawyer for the civil party, Me Bertrand Thomas. But once the couple was together in Belgium, Fatima Khayer discovered that her husband was in a difficult financial situation due to his many gambling debts.

The couple then lived in permanent tension due to the lack of money. Tired of this situation, Fatima Khayer had decided to emancipate herself and separate from him. "Her socialization did not please Mokhtar Ammari," adds the lawyer who claims that the accused intentionally killed his wife. "That day, he was not carried away by a spontaneous impulse or a fit of madness. He arrived determined and killed Fatima Khayer with 23 stab wounds. The homicide was purely premeditated," specified Me Thomas.

For the lawyer representing the couple’s children, Me Laëtitia Lamchachti, the accused "hated the friends who allowed Fatima Khayer to flourish. He wanted her to stay at home and take care of the children, because he was jealous." She also recalls that the accused frequently assaulted and threatened the victim with death in the presence of the children, who had to intervene once when he tried to strangle their mother.

Contrary to the statements of Mokhtar Ammari who describes his wife as "a violent mother," the lawyer Lamchachti assures that Fatima was a "kind, loving, gentle, committed and concerned mother for the education of her children." "It is because she had decided to leave him that he decided to kill her," also stressed Me Paul Thomas, who claims that Fatima Khayer died without knowing that she was officially divorced.