“It is required the indictment before the Assize Court of Loir-et-Cher of the father and mother of the deceased victim”, announced Friday the prosecutor of Blois Frédéric Chevallier, in a press release.
In his indictment, the magistrate asked that the mother of the victim, Halima El Bakhti, be tried for aggravated murder of a minor under the age of fifteen and that father Ahmed Touloub appear for complicity in this same aggravated murder.
The magistrate considers that the investigation has “allowed to characterize and retain” this crime “for which life imprisonment is incurred”.
If the investigating judge decided to follow these requisitions, “a hearing in the course of the year 2023 would be possible, subject to the exercise of possible appeals”, specified Mr. Chevallier.
The judge in charge of the case notified the end of the investigation on June 10 to the prosecutor as well as to the lawyers for the civil parties and the indicted. Lawyers can now make submissions to the judge, before the latter decides to issue a possible indictment order against the girl’s parents.
– DNA sample-
The investigators had gone back to the parents, hitherto unknown, of little Inass, nicknamed the “Little martyr of the A10”, thanks to a DNA sample taken from her brother, arrested in 2016 in a case of violence.
After comparison with the National Automated DNA File (FNAEG), a match had been revealed with DNA traces on the clothes and the blanket in which the child’s body was wrapped, when it was discovered on August 11, 1987 in a motorway ditch in Suèvres (Loir-et-Cher) by two employees of the Cofiroute company.
Thanks to the brother’s DNA, the investigators were able to identify and trace the parents, a couple in their sixties, from Morocco and who had seven children.
Investigators had also cross-checked data from the Family Allowance Fund (CAF) to determine that a child of the couple was no longer registered.
The couple had been indicted in June 2018 for murder, concealment of a corpse and habitual violence against a minor under the age of 15. These “related offences” of concealment of a corpse and usual violence “being covered by the prescription”, the prosecution requested a dismissal of the charges concerning them, specified the prosecutor.
While in police custody, neither parent admitted to being the perpetrator of the violence that led to the death of little Inass, accusing each other of domestic violence.
The father said he was “relieved” by the discoveries of the investigators, but the mother assured “not to understand why” she was summoned, the prosecutor then indicated.
-“Here lies an angel”-
The mutilated corpse of the girl bore traces of burns from an iron and scars from human bites, probably from a woman, according to forensic scientists
The investigating judge of Blois, in charge of the case at the time, had estimated that it was “practically a case of cannibalism with the removal of flesh”.
After the discovery of the girl, the gendarmerie had launched the largest judicial dissemination ever undertaken in France. His description had been broadcast in more than 30 countries and his photograph posted in all public places.
A dismissal order was issued in October 1997, after fruitless searches, leaving the case unsolved.
The girl was buried anonymously in the cemetery of Suèvres (Loir-et-Cher) near the place of discovery of the body. On the tomb, regularly flowered by the inhabitants of the commune, is engraved a simple inscription: “Here rests an angel”.
