Long French jail term for woman in violent partner murder

A French court on Saturday handed down a long jail term to a woman who murdered and dismembered her former partner, the father of her young son.

Published: 19 November 2022 18:36 CET

An inmate is seen outside his cell at Gradignan prison in southwestern France. A French woman who murdered and dismembered her former partner has been given a 22-year prison sentence. Photo: Thibaud MORITZ / AFP

The court in the northern city of Rouen handed down a 22-year sentence to Celine Vasselin, 35, and 17 years to her friend and accomplice Jessica Adam, 39, for the November 2018 killing of Sliman Amara, who Vasselin maintains ruined her life with his violent behaviour.

During the week-long trial, witnesses including Vasselin’s father testified that she had complained repeatedly about Amara’s violent behaviour while members of the deceased’s family insisted on his good character.

The trial was just the latest high-profile case of women being brought to court in France over the killing of allegedly violent partners, amid concern over the high numbers of women killed by their partners every year.

The prosecution had demanded a 30-year term for Vasselin, a beautician, and 25 for Adam, a customer who became a friend.

The pair were accused of drugging Amara, 45 in a Rouen suburb on the night of November 3-4 2018 before killing him with a knife, cutting up his body and then throwing it in bags into the River Seine.

A third suspect accused of being aware of the plot and not denouncing the pair to the authorities was acquitted.

Vasselin and Adam both admitted to killing Amara. Vasselin tearfully told the court on Thursday that she “regretted” the killing and was “so ashamed” of what she had done.

‘Prince charming’

Throughout the trial, she described Amara as a man who originally appeared to be a “prince charming” but then changed after the birth of their child and drank excessively.

She says he raped her, locked her up and also threatened her with a knife.

“Her partner was making her life an ordeal,” her father testified, adding that his daughter once told him that Amara had “dragged her by the hair holding a knife against her throat”.

However, relatives of Amara including his sister, cousin, and brother painted a different picture of the dead man as a caring father.

But an ex-partner admitted he had shown outbursts of anger during their relationship.

A police patrol found Amara’s severed torso washed up on the river bank on November 4, and later found his head and a leg in bags weighed down with rocks.

Cases of women who have killed abusive husbands or partners have become rallying causes for feminists in France in recent years.

Valerie Bacot, who shot her rapist husband Daniel Polette dead in 2016, walked free from court in June 2021 after she was sentenced to a four-year term with three years suspended.

Jacqueline Sauvage, a French woman who was sentenced to 10 years in prison for killing her abusive husband, won a presidential pardon in 2016 after becoming a symbol for the fight to end violence against women.

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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.