ten years in prison for robbery
A 23-year-old engineer was leaving a music festival on the night of December 17 to 18, 2016. His body was found two months later in the Ourcq canal.
The Seine-Saint-Denis Assize Court on Tuesday sentenced a man to ten years in prison for having robbed a young man at the exit of a techno festival in Paris in 2016, then fished out dead in the Ourcq canal, but did not accept responsibility for the death.
After five hours of deliberation, the court declared at the end of the evening Abdallah Miladi, 35, guilty of theft with violence against a vulnerable person – the victim having consumed a large quantity of ecstasy – but acquitted him of the count of violence having resulted in death.
“Ending a journey of violent offenders”
The Bobigny prosecution had requested 18 years of criminal imprisonment.
“For the family, the conviction was essential but no sentence would have been heavy enough for the tragic loss of a child”, reacted to AFP Me Dominique Laurier, lawyer for the family of Maxime Rendu.
Asking the Assize Court of Seine-Saint-Denis to “put an end to a course of violent offenders who could only end badly, and protect society from this antisocial personality”, the magistrate also requested a permanent ban from the territory French for the accused, a 35-year-old Tunisian in an irregular situation.
“At 23, like at 33, you can’t imagine that you’re going to die after an evening in Paris,” said Advocate General Alice Dubernet on Tuesday afternoon, retracing the story of a “tragic nocturnal “bad encounter”.
Body found two months later
On the night of December 17 to 18, 2016, Maxime Rendu, a 23-year-old engineer, disappeared after leaving a music festival organized in a hall on the edge of the Parc de la Villette, in the 19th arrondissement of Paris.
Two months later, in February, his body was discovered not far from there, in the territory of the town of Pantin. In a state of decomposition, the corpse is fished out of the Ourcq canal, under the tracks of the ring road.
The very night of his disappearance, the victim’s bank card was swallowed by a local ATM, after three bad codes during attempts to withdraw 120 euros.
Recovered by investigators, the card ended up revealing the DNA of a man, Abdallah Miladi, known to justice under different aliases for multiple acts of violence in the La Villette district – his “hunting ground” for the lawyer for the victim’s family, Me Dominique Laurier.
The defendant denies the facts
Questioned in the morning about the facts, the accused, shaved head and black quilted jacket, again denied the facts and delivered a confused version of that night in the Parc de la Villette: “this guy, I have nothing to see, I didn’t push” into the channel, he argued aggressively.
According to his story, moving and with many gray areas, he discovered the unconscious young man in a dark alley near the Cité des Sciences, a market with him to a bench on the Canal de l’Ourcq then went to withdraw money with the bank card at the request of its owner. When he returned, the young man had disappeared.
“No, that evening he is not walking around like a Franciscan with his bottle of water to help drunk people in the Parc de la Villette!”, mocked the general counsel.