Moroccan Man on Trial for 2017 Fatal Stabbing of French Job Seeker

The events date back to 2017. Valentin Amrouche had left his grandparents’ house on July 18 to attend a 9 a.m. appointment at the AFPA training center in Montceau-les-Mines, recalls franceinfo. The 26-year-old man was expected there for an interview that would allow him to finalize a plumber-roofer training scheduled for the September start. Once the appointment was kept, Valentin was to have coffee at a friend’s place. The latter is the last person to have seen him alive. He will not return and will no longer give any sign of life.

His grandparents, who did not believe in the disappearance of their grandson, will eventually doubt. The gendarmerie opens an investigation for worrying disappearance. The search begins. A gendarmerie helicopter was used to try to locate Valentin’s vehicle. The investigators manage to find the lifeless body of the young man, on August 3, in an apartment in the Salengro district of Montceau-les-Mines. The body was already in a state of decomposition.

While the investigators continued the investigations, they received a telephone call from Morocco, on August 5. On the other end of the line was Tarik Attar, the son of the tenants of the apartment where the body was discovered. This man, in his forties, admits to having killed Valentin Amrouche before fleeing to his country of origin.

He returns to France. Placed in police custody, he will then be presented to the Chalon-sur-Saône prosecutor’s office on Monday, August 7. An investigating judge indicts him for murder. The quadragenarian claims to have struck the victim, but "only in self-defense". Except that this man is known to the police for having been convicted several times for acts of violence.

Since August 2017, Tarik Attar has been held in pre-trial detention. His trial before the Saône-et-Loire Assize Court, in Chalon-sur-Saône, opens this Monday and will end on Thursday, June 18.