French Father on Trial for Alleged Ritual Sacrifice Plot of 5-Year-Old Son in Sahara

Last December, a couple from Gironde - two music teachers - were arrested at the port of Algeciras by the Civil Guard as they were about to board a ferry to Morocco by car in order to sacrifice their "possessed" child in the Sahara desert "on Christmas Day so that he would resurrect like Jesus." The arrest of the couple followed an investigation opened by the Bordeaux prosecutor’s office on December 19, after a "call from a petitioner concerned about the 5-year-old son of a couple of friends," as well as the issuance of a European arrest warrant against them. After their arrest, the parents were extradited to France. They were then incarcerated. They would suffer from "psychiatric problems," according to the Civil Guard.

The couple was indicted "for criminal conspiracy to commit a crime or misdemeanor" and, for several months, for "failure to fulfill their legal obligations compromising the health, safety, morality or education of their minor child." The 5-year-old child was, in turn, provisionally placed with other members of his family. While the mother was released, placed under judicial supervision and removed from the Gironde region last spring, the father, he, is still incarcerated and appealed the recent extension of his pre-trial detention. Last Friday, they were presented before the court. On Tuesday, the 40-year-old man appeared before the indictment chamber of the Bordeaux Court of Appeal, reports Sud Ouest.

At the bar, the forty-year-old proclaims his innocence. He talks about the "mystical state" he would have known at the end of 2023, "something extraordinary with God." "I did research to understand what had happened to me, I talked to 25 people and out of those 25, only one lied. The only testimony you have is a lie. I never talked about sacrifice. I am innocent. I love my son. The trip to the Sahara was a dream since I was little," he claims, referring to "astronomy" and "the beauty of the desert." But the Court does not believe him. It confronts him with the transcripts of the exchanges he had by telephone with his companion from prison, "which was forbidden to him." We hear him say: "We must lie to the judge, present things in a less alarming way. As soon as I get out, we’ll leave for Morocco or Tunisia. We’ll ask the grandparents to bring our child to us and we’ll live there." The verdict will be handed down on January 21.