Defendants sorry over transgender prostitute’s killing as trial ends

Key defendants charged in the murder of a transgender prostitute expressed remorse Saturday at the end of a trial that has highlighted rising violence against sex workers in France.

Published: 29 January 2022 15:37 CET

Defendants sorry over transgender prostitute's killing as trial ends

Protestors hold signs demanding justice for trans prostitute Vanessa Campos. Photo: Lionel Bonaventure/AFP

Vanesa Campos, a 36-year-old from Peru, was fatally shot in the chest in August 2018 in the Bois de Boulogne, a vast wooded park west of Paris that has long been a prostitution zone once night falls.

Police quickly focused on a group of around a dozen men of Egyptian origin, who had staged what prosecutors called a “punitive expedition” against Campos and others who had denounced repeated robberies and assaults against prostitutes and their clients by armed gangs.

Mahmoud Kadri, 24, and Karim Ibrahim, 29, who have accused each other of killing Campos, expressed sorrow on Saturday at the end of a trial that began January 11.

“I apologise for everything that happened. I’m so sorry,” the Arabic-speaking Kadri said through an interpreter before bursting into tears.

“I am so sorry for all that. I am sorry,” Ibrahim told the court in French before deliberations began.

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The prosecution recommended Thursday that Kadri be sentenced to 20 years in jail. He denies claims from his fellow accused that he shot and killed Campos on the night of August 16-17, 2018.

The prosecution recommended 15 years in prison for Ibrahim, now accusing him of complicity to murder rather than the original charge of involvement in a gang murder.

Just a month before her death, Campos was among a group who hired a guard to protect them while working among dense trees with no public lighting.

The assailants were armed with tear gas, tree branches, a knife, a stun gun, and a pistol that had been stolen a week earlier from a police car while the officer was with a prostitute.

Several other men, aged 23 to 34, are charged with participating in the murder — five for taking part in the assault, and a sixth for stealing the pistol.

Campos’s mother and sister, who live in Peru, are civil plaintiffs in the case along with six of her former colleagues, the bodyguard, the Acceptess-T transgender advocacy association and the Mouvement du Nid prostitute support
group.

Acceptess-T in particular argues that increased violence against prostitutes stems from a 2016 law making it illegal to buy sex in France but not to sell it, shifting the criminal responsibility to clients who can be fined if caught.

While some groups say the law helps protect women from trafficking and exploitation by discouraging prostitution, many sex workers say it has made their jobs more dangerous and deprived them of income.

A verdict is expected later Saturday.

Member comments

Anonymous - 30 January 2022 at 15:50 CET

Crocodile tears from a nasty little bunch of young men.

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The French Jewish community, the third largest in the world, has for months been on edge in the face of a growing number of attacks and desecrations of memorials.

“National police in Rouen neutralised early this morning an armed individual who clearly wanted to set fire to the city’s synagogue,” Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Police responded at 6.45 am to reports of “fire near the synagogue”, a police source said.

A source close to the case told AFP the man “was armed with a knife and an iron bar, he approached police, who fired. The individual died”.

“It is not only the Jewish community that is affected. It is the entire city of Rouen that is bruised and in shock,” Rouen Mayor Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol wrote on X.

He made clear there were no other victims other than the attacker.

Two separate investigations have been opened, one into the fire at the synagogue and another into the circumstances of the death of the individual killed by the police, Rouen prosecutors said.

Such an investigation by France’s police inspectorate general is automatic whenever an individual is killed by the police.

The man threatened a police officer with a knife and the latter used his service weapon, said the Rouen prosecutor.

The dead man was not immediately identified, a police source said.

Asked by AFP, the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office said that it is currently assessing whether it will take up the case.

France has the largest Jewish community of any country after Israel and the United States, as well as Europe’s largest Muslim community.

There have been tensions in France in the wake of the October 7th attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas on Israel, followed by the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip.

Red hand graffiti was painted onto France’s Holocaust Memorial earlier this week, prompted anger including from President Emmanuel Macron who condemned “odious anti-Semitism”.

“Attempting to burn a synagogue is an attempt to intimidate all Jews. Once again, there is an attempt to impose a climate of terror on the Jews of our country. Combating anti-Semitism means defending the Republic,” Yonathan Arfi, the president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF). wrote on X.

France was hit from 2015 by a spate of Islamist attacks that also hit Jewish targets. There have been isolated attacks in recent months and France’s security alert remains at its highest level.