A 29-year-old Moroccan migrant has been convicted by a French court of violence toward his former partner who had helped him gain residency in the country.
The Moroccan, named Hamza, is said to have met the victim at a campsite last summer and soon moved in with her in the commune of Périgny, a suburb of the city of La Rochelle.
“He came back with me to Périgny to help him make his papers for his residence permit. He put down his bag and moved in with me,” the young woman named Marie said.
According to a report from the French news platform Actu, the violence against Marie took place from September to mid-October of this year and she reported Hamza to police on October 23rd.
According to her statements, Marie said that Hamza had been violent toward her and had sexually abused her while refusing to leave her home.
The Morrocan migrant refuted her claims in court and claimed that she had called police as “revenge” because he wanted to leave her.
Caroline Fernandez, the prosecutor in the case, noted that the Moroccan had 19 prior criminal accusations, two of which were for prior domestic abuse.
While the prosecutor called for an eight-month term, the judge in the case handed down a ten-month term with four months suspended and an order banning the migrant from the Charente-Maritime department for the next two years.
The case comes after a number of other cases in France involving migrant violence toward those who have helped migrants in the past.
One such case took place earlier this year in Cherbourg when a 20-year-old Afghani migrant admitted to killing the 63-year-old president of a pro-migrant group by breaking into his house and bludgeoning him with an iron rod.
In 2019, pro-migrant activist Audrey Coignard was found dead after being stabbed around a dozen times and her former boyfriend, a migrant from Sudan, was later arrested.
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