The Bouches-du-Rhône juvenile court sentenced two men to long prison terms for the rape of an 18-year-old woman near the SNCF train station in Aix-en-Provence in December 2021.
“It’s a brutal rape par excellence,” said the victim’s lawyer, Maud Bertrand, to Le Figaro.
The court handed Mohamed Annabi, a 29-year-old Algerian, a 17-year sentence that includes a two-thirds security period, a permanent ban from French territory, and registration in the FIJAIS (automated judicial file for perpetrators of sexual or violent offenses). His accomplice, Amen-Allah Handiri, a 20-year-old Tunisian who was 17 at the time of the crime, received 15 years.
The attack took place on one December night in 2021. Around 3 a.m., the victim, referred to as Anissa, left the Shakespeare Club on Place Ramus. Walking home alone, she was approached by the two men, then aged 17 and 25, who spoke to her in Arabic. Sensing their pursuit, Anissa called her boyfriend in an attempt to scare them off. “Stop, I don’t know you!” her boyfriend shouted through the phone, before hearing crying and then silence.
Near the train station, Annabi grabbed the young woman and dragged her into a dead-end street, where he and Handiri took turns raping her. Her screams drew the attention of four passersby, who chased the rapists away.
The two perpetrators were arrested the following day, identified through video surveillance at a student residence where they had been squatting. Both men had been in France for just under a year, living illegally, and working unregistered jobs in construction. They were also abusing alcohol and drugs.
The trial was held behind closed doors. According to her lawyer, Anissa “showed courage and dignity in her suffering.” At the time of the attack, she was studying sociology, but she abandoned her studies due to the trauma. She has since been diagnosed with severe post-traumatic stress disorder. “She is afraid to go out and feels like she is being followed,” Bertrand explained.
Many locals sense their quality of life deteriorating as immigration puts pressure on local communities. While crime rates have surged in the country in the past years, French governments keep spending millions of euros to bring more immigrants into the country.
