Conspiracy Theorist Sentenced to 22 Years for Racially-Charged Paris Murder

The verdict was handed down on Friday. Martial Lanoir was sentenced to 22 years in prison for the 2022 murder of Éric Casado Lopez, a 27-year-old French person of Moroccan and Spanish origin, who was shot in the head, as reported by Le Parisien. This sentence is slightly lower than the 27 years requested by the public prosecutor, with a security period of 14 years. In the dock, the defendant explained that he had wanted to scare, without success, and to shoot at "the most vehement" of the group, Lopez. "I swear before God that I did not want to kill anyone," he assured. But the jurors did not believe the theories of accidental shooting and self-defense.

The facts for which Martial Lanoir was convicted occurred on the night of Friday, May 13 to Saturday, May 14, 2022. That night, he was driving his BMW on a Parisian boulevard near the Moulin Rouge when he witnessed, according to him, the "lynching" of a man by four individuals. According to his testimony, he had asked them to stop from his vehicle. Subsequently, he got out and brandished his weapon to "scare them", without success, and shot at "the most vehement" of the group, Eric Casado Lopez. The irreparable was committed in the space of 20 seconds.

After committing this crime, Lanoir went home. As he was about to load luggage into his car, the man who was convinced that a civil war was threatening to break out in France and regularly carried a weapon, a stolen 45-caliber pistol, in a holster to protect himself, was arrested by the police after a brief foot chase.