I will kill you all. I will come back and carry out an assassination at the station’. On Wednesday evening, October 9, railway police officers at Nîmes station were confronted by a 21-year-old man who made death threats and then threatened to carry out an attack at the station. According to the officers, he even shouted ‘Allah Akbar’. The defendant, who appeared before the criminal court in Nîmes on Tuesday October 15, only partially admitted to these incidents.
According to Valérie Ducam, the presiding judge, this altercation started over a joint that the defendant is said to have smoked at Nîmes railway station. The officers then demanded the defendant’s identity papers. They then refused him access to the train as he did not have a valid ticket. The man starts raging. ‘’You insult them as idiots. You say that you’re from Marseille, that you’ve been in prison and that you know certain people,’ reports the chairwoman. The defendant denies these statements, as well as the death threats and the glorification of terrorism. And this despite the fact that one of the officers had switched on a video at the time of the crime. ‘They said they wanted to kill them, their wives and children. So you’re saying they’re lying?’ asks the chairwoman. ‘Of course they’re lying. I have to tell you something about security on the train, if you’re black or Arab, they start giving you the hairy eyeball after a certain time,’ the defendant tries to justify himself.
As far as the violence is concerned, the accused does not admit to the punch, but only that he bumped into one of the officers, who at least got off with two days on sick leave. ‘But only because he had bumped into me beforehand. I went completely bananas,’ he emphasises. He justifies this by saying that he suffers from schizophrenia and had not taken his medication that day. A medical history that was not proven during the trial. For the public prosecutor Philip Ughetto, these facts are very alarming. This is all the more true as the defendant had previously been convicted of violence, death threats and glorification of terrorism. ‘A worrying criminal record, considering he is only 21 years old. He obviously can’t stand authority,’ the prosecutor said.
His lawyer Mélanie Bargeton pleaded for his acquittal on charges of glorifying terrorism and making death threats. ‘In police custody, he admitted that he was not in his natural state. He was prepared to apologise. He had no intention of attacking the officers, and certainly not the station.’ An argument that did not prevail before the court, which sentenced him to four years in prison with revocation of his six-month suspended sentence and a five-year ban on living in the region.