Former Lawyer Reveals Disturbing Details About Suspect in Philippine Murder Case

Convicted in March 2022 by the Pontoise juvenile assize court to seven years in prison for the rape of a 22-year-old student in the Bois de Taverny (Val-d’Oise) in August 2019, Taha O. was released from prison on June 20, 2024 after five years of detention, then placed in a detention center, pending his deportation to Morocco. But he will ultimately be released on September 3. Two weeks later, he is arrested in Switzerland as a suspect in the rape and murder of Philippine, a student whose body was found in the Bois de Boulogne (Paris).

In an interview with the newspaper Le Parisien, Me Laura Beauvais says she never suspected that Taha O. would reoffend. "The last time I saw Taha was after the verdict of the Pontoise juvenile assize court. I needed to see him to know what state of mind he was in and how he had received the verdict. And I had the feeling that he seemed to be doing better... At the hearing, he admitted the facts of rape after having long denied them during the investigation... and I had the feeling of a real awareness. It seems difficult to hear today, but he told me that he had a lot of projects, like passing his baccalaureate. He dreamed of becoming an accountant."

The criminal lawyer also made disturbing revelations about the "chaotic" life of the young Moroccan. "Taha had a particularly chaotic childhood. In Morocco, he experienced extremely hard things: he lived with a friend in a parking lot and there is a strange story around his origins. He has always been told since he was little that his mother died in her sleep. But when he was incarcerated in Nanterre, a woman reported herself as being his biological mother, without this being able to be verified. She never obtained visiting authorizations and did not give any more news afterwards," she recounts.

She will continue: "Then, in adolescence, Taha’s father took him to Spain, telling him it was a trip. In reality, he literally abandoned him in the street, in this country he did not know, to go start a new life with a woman in Germany. He thought Taha would do better on his own in Spain than in Morocco." Taha O. then found himself in France where he was placed in a home for unaccompanied minors in Taverny. "The educators described him as someone benevolent and attentive. I know that in light of what happened, it may seem inappropriate, but he had a beautiful personality according to what they said," confides Me Beauvais.

The lawyer for Taha also states that, according to the educators’ report, the 22-year-old Moroccan "had high intellectual abilities, particularly in mathematics. He read a lot, went to the library regularly. During his incarceration in the Nanterre juvenile prison, he was schooled and did his homework seriously, with a desire to get out of it." Unfortunately, he "fell apart" after his transfer to the adult sector. "I saw him: he was doing very badly and was in great loneliness. There were several alerts issued to the justice system about the fact that he was at risk of harming himself. We feared a suicide, not a recidivism," concludes the criminal lawyer.