{"id":20726,"date":"2021-12-17T22:44:57","date_gmt":"2021-12-18T03:44:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=20726"},"modified":"2021-12-17T22:44:57","modified_gmt":"2021-12-18T03:44:57","slug":"gardener-omar-raddad-wins-fight-to-re-open-notorious-murder-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2021\/12\/17\/gardener-omar-raddad-wins-fight-to-re-open-notorious-murder-case\/","title":{"rendered":"Gardener Omar Raddad wins fight to re-open notorious murder case"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A Moroccan gardener convicted of the gruesome murder of a rich French widow 30 years ago has won his bid to reopen the case and try to clear his name.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In one of France’s most notorious murder cases, Omar Raddad, now 59, was found guilty of stabbing to death his employer, Ghislaine Marchal, 65.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The case hinged on a blood-scrawled message on a door by her mutilated body, reading: “Omar killed me”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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But the note contained a glaring grammatical mistake.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Instead of using the past participle verb for “killed” (tu\u00e9e), the inscription used the infinitive (tuer).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Mr Raddad’s lawyers argued that he had been framed because Marchal – a wealthy and well-educated woman – would never have made such an error.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The case has long gripped France, drawing accusations that Mr Raddad, an immigrant, was the victim of discrimination. Books and films depicted the conviction as a miscarriage of justice.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In 1996, two years after he was sentenced to 18 years in jail, Mr Raddad was partly pardoned by then-French President Jacques Chirac.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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He was freed from prison but his conviction was never overturned.<\/p>\n

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Mr Raddad lodged an appeal for his case to be reopened this June, after new DNA evidence emerged.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The traces of four unknown men were found at the scene in 2015. One of the them, Mr Raddad’s supporters say, is the real murderer who framed him.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Sylvie Noachovitch, Mr Raddad’s lawyer, said he had been given fresh hope by the decision by France’s top appeals court to re-examine the evidence.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“This ruling is a step towards a reversal of the conviction,” Ms Noachovitch said, “but the battle is not over.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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She said she hoped the reopened case would “rectify one of the biggest judicial errors of the 20th century”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Marchal’s family still maintain that the former gardener is guilty of killing the socialite at her villa on the French Riviera.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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They say the DNA traces have been contaminated. And at Mr Raddat’s trial, they said she had a habit of making grammatical errors.<\/p>\n

Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Moroccan gardener convicted of the gruesome murder of a rich French widow 30 years ago has won his bid to reopen the case and try to clear his name. In one of France’s most […]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20727,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6],"tags":[2913],"class_list":{"0":"post-20726","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"category-world","9":"tag-france","10":"pmpro-has-access"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20726"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20726\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20729,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20726\/revisions\/20729"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}