Trial Begins for Man Accused in Fatal Stabbing of Partner in Marmande, France

Younes Moudni is appearing from January 27 to 30 before the Assizes Court of Lot-et-Garonne for the murder of Laura de Pradena Caceres, committed in 2022 in Marmande. The 32-year-old woman died on Rue Gillet, just steps from her Marmande home, in the night of February 16 to 17, 2022. During the hearing, the president "retraces this call received by the firefighters on the morning of February 17, 2022," reports Le Parisien. That day, the young woman was on the ground in the street, screaming, and calling for help from the firefighters. Her body was found in the center of Marmande. She was in cardiac arrest, with several serious wounds to the face and chest. There was a lot of blood in front of the open door of number 30. She had been stabbed in the back with a 31 cm knife.

Shortly afterwards, her partner, with whom she had a recent relationship, was arrested. Younès admitted to having inflicted four knife blows on his partner. "That evening," he said in custody, "he had not intended to kill her but her attitude had made him lose his mind." But the Moroccan is a repeat offender. "[...] he had gotten carried away, had called me a bitch because I had come home late from the souk. He had hit a closet, then had asked me for forgiveness," remembers Sonia, his ex-wife whom he had met in Morocco through a mutual friend. Sonia and Younès had married in Morocco, and the accused had joined her in France in December 2017. At the stand, the ex-wife recounts that Younès became "verbally violent" after the death of his father: "He started drinking alcohol. If I didn’t do what he asked, he insulted me, spat on me."

Sonia mentions a cigarette burn he had inflicted on himself: "Every time I look at this burn, he had told her, I will hate you," the ex-wife still remembers. The domestic violence continues. One day in October 2018, she receives a slap: "My head was spinning, I was bleeding from the nose, he went to get a knife from the kitchen saying: I’m going to kill myself. Today, it’s you or me. When my mother and my daughter arrived, they tried to calm him down." Sonia managed to obtain a divorce. Younès Moudni, for his part, received a sentence of five months in prison with probation for this violence.

In turn, Nabil, the accused’s brother, paints a portrait of the accused. According to him, his older brother had a difficult childhood in Morocco. He lived with a strict, intransigent father who beat him. "My father had enrolled him in a private school so that he would succeed and put pressure on him to study. Once when he had caught him playing football, he tied him up by the feet to hit him on the head, we thought he was dead," Nabil recounts.

The trial continues until January 30, 2025. Younès faces a sentence of life imprisonment.