Moroccan Mother Sentenced to 14 Years for Murdering Disabled Daughters in France

The verdict is in. Naïma Bel Allam, a former Moroccan accountant, accused of aggravated voluntary homicide, was sentenced to 14 years of criminal imprisonment by the Assizes Court of Lot-et-Garonne, reports BFMTV. "Disappointed" by the verdict, her lawyer Sophie Grolleau "reserves the right to appeal". For her part, Sylvie Brussiau, the lawyer for the father of the teenagers who was separated from the defendant and had not seen his daughters for several years when they disappeared, expresses her dissatisfaction. "Today we have a conviction, but it is not a success because we do not have the answers we were expecting," she reacted.

According to the Specialized Institute of Education for the Multiply Disabled (Isep) in Tonneins (Lot-et-Garonne), which had welcomed them during the day, the two 12 and 13-year-old girls, born with malformations, have been missing since December 7, 2016. Naïma claimed to have entrusted her daughters to a Moroccan couple at a highway rest area in Spain. A version contradicted by the investigators. On Wednesday, this mother, who was appearing free for "aggravated voluntary homicide", had admitted to having changed versions out of distrust of the authorities and fear of her daughters being "placed under guardianship". At the hearing, she said she had handed them over to a "group of friends" she had met in 2015 in Morocco.

The defendant had "loudly and clearly" claimed that her two daughters were "still alive" and that she had news of them, even though she had not seen them "since March 2017". "Naïma Bel Allam could have provided proof of life, which would have stopped everything, but she did not do so. Everyone would have wanted the girls to be alive, but they are not," declared public prosecutor Corinne Chateigner, who had requested between 12 and 13 years of imprisonment. And to add: "She will never admit what she has done, because she has managed to convince herself that her children are still alive". Without failing to recall that "the discovery of a body or human remains is not constitutive of a murder".