Moroccan Man Sentenced to 20 Years for Paris Murder After Faking Own Death

Justice has been served for Mehdi Ettir, a Franco-Tunisian murdered in the Belleville neighborhood of Paris in March 2011. On Tuesday, the Criminal Chamber of the Court of First Instance in Rabat sentenced Hassan B., the perpetrator of the murder, to 20 years in prison. He was tried for assault and battery resulting in death and use of a forged document. After his conviction, he immediately appealed, Radio France reported. The victim’s older sister, Inès Ettir, did the same. "I won’t give up, I’ll continue my fight no matter what, to get justice for my brother and for my family to find peace," she said. The appeal trial should be held in the next two months.

It all started with a dispute between her brother and Hassan B., two childhood friends. Mehdi had not tolerated that Hassan gassed a neighbor’s dog. A fight broke out between them. According to several witnesses, "Mehdi got the upper hand." But the next day, Hassan decided to take revenge. "He was waiting for my brother downstairs at my mother’s house. [...] He told him: ’come, let’s talk,’ recounts Inès Ettir. They grew up together, my brother didn’t mistrust him, but he didn’t see that he had a knife. He gave him the first blow to the thigh, another to the buttock. My brother ran, but as he was losing blood, he fell." She continues: "He tried to get up, but then the murderer arrived, kicked him in the head, then delivered another blow that pierced his lung and heart. And he fled to Morocco."

Three months after Mehdi’s murder, one of Hassan B.’s brothers "came to hand over" a death certificate to the judicial police in Paris. "He told them that his brother had committed suicide in Morocco," explains the victim’s sister. "In fact, it was the father who managed to have a fake death certificate made at the civil registry in Rabat. There were then funeral rites, the coffin, the lifting of the body..." Inès asserts that "everything was false, and fortunately the investigators of the judicial police unraveled the scheme." She will add: "They managed to crack some members of the family living in France. How could they do that? They probably thought they were very powerful... But I was lucky to have very good lawyers in France and Morocco."

After the investigators of the Paris judicial police were able to prove that everything was false, the Paris Court examined the case and handed down its verdict. In 2015, Hassan B. had been sentenced to 25 years in prison in absentia, the Parisian lawyer Joseph Cohen-Sabban said.