Fifteen after the events, Mamadou Diallo, a 34-year-old stretcher bearer, was sentenced Thursday October 19 on appeal to sixteen years in prison for the murder of a postal worker in Ain, after being acquitted at first instance, the final twist in a case which was not lacking.
Jurors at the Rhône Assize Court found that Mamadou Diallo was guilty of intentionally killing Catherine Burgod, a 41-year-old woman found stabbed in the small postal agency of Montréal-la-Cluse in December 2008, during ‘flight.
When the verdict was announced, after more than three hours of deliberation, the accused buried his head in his hands for a long time. His family and loved ones collapsed in the room, expressing their despair.
Mamadou Diallo is “the victim of a terrible judicial error”, denounced his lawyer Sylvie Noachovitch. “We did not apply the law: the law is that doubt must benefit the accused,” she reacted, announcing that her client was going to appeal to the Court of Cassation. With a sentence well below the requisitions, she believes that the decision was taken “to appease the victims”. “We had to put a name to this crime,” according to her.
For the civil parties, it is the end of a fifteen-year fight, underlined their lawyer, Me Jean-François Barre. “You are never satisfied with a man who goes to prison. The family’s fight was guilt, the punishment belongs to society,” he declared after the verdict.
“I put my life in your hands,” Mamadou Diallo said, just before the jurors withdrew. He, who always proclaimed his innocence, was acquitted in 2022 “with the benefit of the doubt” and his lawyer pleaded for the same epilogue.
The attorney general had requested thirty years of imprisonment. “Mr. Diallo is not a substitute culprit who comes by chance,” assured Eric Mazaud, reiterating his initial request.
Disturbing statements from former actor Gérald Thomassin
The defense denounced a fragile case. “Who today can say that they have no doubts? “, she pleaded. “We should not condemn an innocent person to assuage the grief of a family,” she observed, supporting another version of the facts: that of the guilt of the actor who had become marginal Gérald Thomassin, whose celebrity had participated to publicize the issue.
The attorney general had devoted the first part of his indictment to “crucifying” this hypothesis involving the actor, a notorious drug addict, who lived opposite the postal agency and had long served as the “ideal culprit”.
Awarded for his role in a film by Jacques Doillon, Le Petit Criminel, Gérald Thomassin was indicted after disturbing statements and two telephone discussions in the form of a confession.
The investigation, however, took a new direction in 2017, when DNA found at the crime scene was identified as that of Mamadou Diallo, after having been noted in a stolen credit card case finally closed.
Since his arrest, the latter claims to have discovered the body and stole a wad of banknotes while leaving the scene, “in a state of shock”, without calling for help. As for Gérald Thomassin, he disappeared in 2019 before benefiting from a dismissal of the case.
A file that “does not hold up”
For Me Noachovitch, the “immaturity”, the personality and the “shame” of her client make the crime impossible, unlike Gérald Thomassin, whom she described as “unbalanced” and having already been the subject of convictions.
She criticized a case that “does not hold up”, pointing out in particular that the weapon was not found and that Mr. Diallo’s DNA was not on the victim’s body. She also cited behavior consistent with “traumatic shock.”
“The version of simple theft cannot explain reality,” said the Advocate General. Mamadou Diallo is the only one to leave traces of himself in incriminating places. »
During the six days of hearing, the defendant’s family and loved ones expressed their conviction in the innocence of this “kind”, “empathetic”, “jovial” young man. “The robbery that goes wrong happens,” retorted the attorney general.