Many people saw the gardener's conviction as a symbol of the discrimination and injustice suffered by immigrants in France.
"A hundred years ago, an officer was condemned because he was Jewish, today a gardener is condemned because he is North African," said Vergès, who was known for his sensational media appearances. A symbol of discriminationĪt the time of Raddad’s conviction in 1994, his legal counsel, celebrity French lawyer Jacques Vergès, caused an uproar by comparing his client's case to the Dreyfus affair, in which a Jewish army captain was accused of spying for Germany during a period of heightened anti-Jewish sentiment in France. The case quickly took on a sociopolitical dimension, pitting two diametrically opposed worlds against each other: On the one hand, a poor Moroccan immigrant who spoke halting French, and on the other, a wealthy family from the Côte d'Azur.
But defence lawyers argued it was highly unlikely that Marchal, a wealthy and educated widow, would make such a mistake, fuelling intense speculation that Raddad – who was found guilty and sentenced to 18 years in jail – had been framed. For prosecutors, the message was enough to incriminate Omar Raddad, Marchal’s gardener at the time.
0 kommentar(er)
