Octogenarian Sentenced to 25 Years for Wife’s Murder in French Home

"His wife was burned and strangled to death in her kitchen," the lawyer for the victim’s children stated last Friday. Impassive and without any emotion, Driss Ben Hamadi, aged 80, simply said: "I did nothing," despite the heavy sentence handed down by the jurors of the Assize Court.

On July 11, 2016, the disabled mother of the family had been found burned in the family home in Aunay-sous-Crecy. For the children’s lawyer, the woman, full of life despite her disability, had been the victim of a "family closed-door meeting. A final fatal confrontation between a man and his wife."

This detached and devoid of any form of empathy aspect, which the defendant had managed to erect in front of his children, would also have marked the jurors and the defense of the civil party. "Four days of hearings, and we are still facing a wall of ice," the Attorney General points out. "No emotion, except when we talk to him about money," she says.

"I ask you to sentence him to thirty years of criminal detention. I am aware that at his age, this means life imprisonment. But premeditation is only an aggravating circumstance. Two others were not retained: murder of a spouse, and murder of a vulnerable person," she had requested at the end of the hearing.