Omar Raddad’s last hope – Paris Match

it was thirty years ago. Another era, another century. The gendarmes wore mustaches and caps, DNA analyzes were in their infancy and the telephones were not limited. On June 24, 1991, in the cellar of her villa La Chamade, on the heights of Mougins (Alpes-Maritimes), Ghislaine Marchal, a wealthy widow, is found dead, her body covered with bruises and stabbed. On the cellar door, locked from the outside, the investigators dispatched read this inscription in letters of blood: “Omar killed me. The most famous cheating mistake in the history of crime. We do not take long to make the connection. Some Omar Raddad is employed as a gardener on the neighboring property. He also sometimes works for Mme Marchal. He is a simple man, discreet, without fuss. He hardly speaks French, speaks with a strong accent and does not like to attract attention. One could not imagine a better culprit.

800 kilometers away, the writer Jean-Marie Rouart discovers, like everyone else, the news item in the newspapers. At that time, we still read the newspapers. “It was first of all the novelist in me who was shocked. Nothing was going on in this matter. Bad Agatha Christie, sewn with white thread. If we stick to the official version, it does not hold water, it is absurd. There are only gendarmes to believe such a thing … “

Omar Raddad “Jean-Marie Rouart did not defend me, he defended justice and France”

The writer decides to take up the pen. Franz-Olivier Giesbert, then managing editor of “Figaro”, sees him arrive in his office, all fire and flame. In the columns of the daily, he signed a first article, already raised the shortcomings of the investigation, noted certain inconsistencies. Rouart is outraged by the disappearance of evidence, the lack of investigation into the victim’s past. He denounces a “complicity of interests”, maneuvers to “guide suspicion and obstruct”. Other articles follow, from the same barrel. Public opinion is divided. Like the Dreyfus affair a hundred years earlier, the Omar Raddad affair divides the French. There are the pro and the anti. Jean-Marie Rouart has chosen his camp.

Why do we engage in one fight rather than another? What are our intimate convictions based on? What are the reasons for a man to lead a crusade? “It’s mysterious,” responds the person concerned. There are objective reasons, of course, and more buried, more unconscious reasons. “At first sight, as moreover at second and third views, everything opposes Jean-Marie Rouart and Omar Raddad. One, son of the upper middle class, descends from a well-established family. It has its name in the Bottin, evolves in the big world and feeds in porcelain. The other is a Moroccan immigrant, with no education or papers. The first lives in the beautiful districts of the capital, the second layer in the small two-room apartment in a popular district of Cannet. Paintings by impressionist painters are hung on the walls of Rouart. At Raddad, a small television broadcasts “The Right Price”. “I only believe in committed journalism. It’s my old Christian background. It is our duty to be indignant. I have always taken the side of the most disadvantaged. “

For Omar, the writer fills the weapons and wets the waistcoat. With the former Minister of Justice Albin Chalandon, he organized a defense committee and rallied big names to his cause. Public figures, famous writers, academics, lawyers, all the obediences elbow there, on the left as on the right. “We even found Henri Troyat there who, in his life, had never signed the slightest petition,” Rouart still welcomes. But nothing helps. On February 2, 1994, after six hours of deliberation, the verdict fell: Omar Raddad was found guilty and sentenced to eighteen years of criminal imprisonment. The writer, who calmly awaited the acquittal, cannot believe it. Accustomed to blows of brilliance, the tenor of the bar in charge of defense, Jacques Vergès, will admit having remained voluntarily sober in his pleadings, so much he was convinced of the innocence of his client. The strategy does not pay off, the addition is heavy. Omar Raddad returns to the shadows.

Jean-Marie Rouart: “I have been accused of taking myself for Zola”

Barely two months later, Jean-Marie Rouart published a book on the affair whose title alone speaks volumes: “Omar: the construction of a culprit”. The writer announces that he wrote it in three weeks, “in haste and in passion, outrage [le] was burning ”. He maintains that Omar Raddad would have been the victim of a conspiracy, and implicates the family of the victim and the judges, against the backdrop of possible obscure political regulations. He criticizes the investigation, is indignant at the rapid cremation of the body and the destruction of the last photos taken by the victim, supports the thesis of an assassination on June 24 and not the day before, even slips into the garden of La Chamade by crossing fences and hedges, in order to prove that the assassin could have entered without having a key … The book does not obtain the expected success. “Neither the public nor the journalists were ready to hear this side of the story. So I did what I had never done: I went to ask Pivot to invite me on his show. “Out of friendship, the host grants him this favor and receives him at” Apostrophes “. In front of millions of viewers, Rouart defends the man he has never met.

“I have hesitated several times to go see Omar in his prison. In the end I didn’t. I was afraid of letting myself be overcome by a compassion that would have clouded my judgment, or of finding myself in front of a condemned man who would have been short of the injustice committed against him. In this, I was wrong. It was not until the partial pardon granted by President Chirac, in 1996, and the early release of Raddad, in 1998, for the two men to meet. After more than seven years of detention, Omar Raddad is free; he is not, however, exonerated. “I discovered one of those beings whose spiritual dimension takes hold of you. He is a magnetic person, gifted with great intuition. That day he gave me a leather desk pad that I’m still writing on. “” Jean-Marie Rouart did not defend me, declared Omar Raddad to a journalist. He defended justice, he defended France. The same year, the writer, received at the Academy, invites his “friend” to the ceremony of handing over the sword. Some academics are offended. “We can not all the same receive under the dome a condemned”, would have moved Maurice Druon … “If he does not come, I will not come either”, retorts Rouart to the annoying.

In authorized circles, we chuckle. Some evil spirits mock this “white knight crusade”. “I have been accused of taking myself for Zola. A Zola on the small foot … It’s silly, I can not say better. Rouart may recall that this is not his first attempt, that he has already defended Gabrielle Russier and many other lost causes, he is suspected of opportunism. He would have used Omar to make a reputation and enter the French Academy, insinuates lawyer Georges Kiejman. “It is badly to know the customs in force, publicly defends it his friend Jean d’Ormesson. The Academy loves the powerful: it is better, to shine there, to have written the biography of the king of Morocco than that of an unfortunate gardener. “

In truth, in this case, there are mostly blows to be taken. And Rouart takes them all. Following a statement more pointed than the others, the family of the victim claims 800,000 francs for defamation. In question, the use of the word “conspiracy” in an article. The academician is sentenced to a fine of 60,000 euros in the second instance. A few weeks later, Jean-Marie Rouart was ousted from the direction of “Figaro littéraire”. “I asked for explanations that were never given to me. But it seems to me that I was not put in the closet for my articles on Chateaubriand… ”

Since then, time has done its work. Raddad now has white hair. The lawyer Vergès is dead, Sylvie Noachovitch succeeded him. In the general opinion, she fights like a lioness: “Less emphasis than her predecessor, more tenacity”, abounds Jean-Marie Rouart. On June 23, Me Noachovitch filed a new appeal for review, so that Omar Raddad is cleared based on a new DNA analysis. Advances in science have made it possible to identify new genetic fingerprints, none of which matches that of Omar Raddad. The commission’s decision will be released on December 16. “More than ever,” assures Jean-Marie Rouart, “there is hope. Last week, the two men had dinner together in a small restaurant in the 7th arrondissement. “Omar continues to amaze me with his composure. He has no hatred and continues to love this country. One of his sons is engaged in the navy and the other works for the town hall of Toulon. He has confidence. Justice must know how to recognize that it was wrong. Otherwise it will no longer be justice. ”

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