The trumpeter Ibrahim Maalouf, who was sentenced in the first instance in France for the sexual assault of a student of 14 years, was acquitted Wednesday in the appeal.
Share
July 8, 2020 12: 30 pm
Share
Sexual assault: the trumpeter Ibrahim Maalouf acquitted on appeal
Agence France-Presse
PARIS — The trumpeter Ibrahim Maalouf, who was sentenced in the first instance in France for the sexual assault of a student of 14 years, was acquitted Wednesday in the appeal, a decision hailed as a “victory” by his defense, but described as’unconscionable’ by the parents of the complainant.
The court of appeal of Paris reversed the judgment of the court of Créteil (france), which had condemned the artist franco-lebanese, now 39-year-old, a four-month suspended prison sentence and 20,000 euro fine in December 2018.
“This relaxes pronounced shows finally his innocence, that I remember his name, his honour, have been thrown into pasture, particularly on social networks,” responded his lawyer, ms. Fanny Colin, welcoming a “very great victory for Ibrahim Maalouf, whose honour is restored”.
On the contrary it is a decision “unfair” to the complainant and her parents, reported their attorney, Me Jean-Baptiste Moquet, who said that the family, “stunned”, was going to speak “in the coming days”.
“If I don’t speak more as a lawyer of the victim and his parents, but as a professional, it is incomprehensible, he added. Justice is not the same for the personalities and for the common man.”
The court did not follow the requisitions of the general counsel, who had requested the hearing on 2 June increasing the sentence of first instance by imposing on the accused a two-year suspended prison sentence and 40,000 euro fine.
The girl, who was doing an internship in December 2013 within the production home of the trumpeter, had said that the latter had kissed her for the first time “with the language,” an evening at the exit of a cinema.
Ibrahim Maalouf said it was a “smack”, a simple “kiss” initiated by the trainee, which he had repelled the advances.
“Truth is not shared”
Two days later, depending on the version of the complainant, he had again kissed, and then “caught her by the pond”, mimicking a sexual act, this time after a course of trumpet in his recording studio Ivry-sur-Seine, a paris suburb.
A second sequence that has never existed, had protested the artist, who has produced call of new documents seeking to justify his employment of the time at the time.
“Ibrahim Maalouf has not adopted a proper positioning with respect to the (the) girl of 14 years, necessarily suggestible, exchanging with it messages completely inadequate, an attitude which he himself has called “nauseating””, according to the judgment of the court of appeal, who points out that it is not, however, to capture these facts.
“The kiss landed on December 11, 2013 is real, but the guilty intention makes default, in the absence of elements that allow to say with certainty that it would have been the initiator,” continues the court.
“The material evidence of facts that would have occurred on 12 or 13 December in the basement of the recording studio is not reported, this does not mean that (the girl) has lied, but that his truth is not shared by the court, in the absence of evidence to be sufficiently relevant, precise and concordant.”
The justice was seized in 2014 after a notification of the parents of the girl. This last, which had started to scarify and to have eating disorders, was entrusted to a physician. Ibrahim Maalouf had been placed in custody in January 2017.
Born in Beirut in 1980, the musician has been several times gold disc and winner of the Victoires de la musique and a Caesar. He has collaborated with great names of jazz and is regularly invited to major festivals.
