Besançon Trial: Man Faces Murder Charges in Brutal Stabbing of Partner

A crime that sends shivers down the spine, in the description of the forensic doctor, on the first day of the trial of Ismaël Tijani, 35, who took the life of the very one who shared his life for six months.

Indeed, the coroner examined the victim’s body and said he had counted "thirteen stab wounds, nine in the neck and five in the chest, some 17 cm deep. As for the face, the right eye was swollen, the jaw fractured, the nose shattered". At the crime scene, the investigators found the murder weapon, a 35 cm knife with a 22 cm blade, reports L’Est Républicain.

After the crime, Ismaël, who took care to bleach and tidy up the apartment, wrapped the victim’s body in eight layers of sheets and blankets, placing a child’s headband on her head, to, he said, "prevent the blood from spreading further in the room". However, at the bar, when asked to explain the headband, he says he no longer remembers having put it on.

At the origin of this unheard-of violence, "a dispute that had broken out within the couple around Ismaël’s criminal past and his true identity". Indeed, he would have passed himself off as "Saïd Chibani", hiding that he had just come out of prison five months before their meeting, after serving eight years for a case of rape and violence," reports the same source.

In reality, "this conviction had also resulted in a refusal of naturalization and a non-renewal of his residence permit, which had expired five months [earlier], so that he had to be deported to Morocco, his country of origin," details the news site.