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France: Court verdicts in shooting cases

01 January 1991

France: Court verdicts in shooting cases
artdoc May=1993

The killer of a 23-year-old North African youth, Ali Rafa, was
acquitted in November. In February 1989, Maria-Jose Garnier shot
dead Ali Rafa after he had stolen croissants from her bakery in
Reims. Her lawyer, a member of the organisation `Legitime
Defence' presented the killing as a case of self-defence and the
judge ruled out racism as a contributory factor. In court,
however, considerable evidence emerged suggesting that Ms.
Garnier often refused to serve Maghrebians and that she and her
husband used weapons in an `ostentatious' way.
The court decision, condemned as `the verdict of shame by
L'Humanite, was followed by violent disturbances during which
the CRS riot police were deployed to charge crowds outside the
court. Ali Rafa's mother had a heart attack on hearing the
verdict and is now paralysed. `The life of a man is worth less
than a croissant', commented the family's lawyer (L'Humanite
12.11.92 , 13.11.92 and 14.11.92).
Meanwhile, Roger Maillard, the killer of a 19-year-old North
African youth, Khemissi Karar, has been sentenced to 13 years
imprisonment by a court in Seine-St-Denis.
Maillard, a retired man of 61, shot Khemissi by firing at him
from his window on an estate in Neuilly sur Marnes, near Paris
in October 1990. He justified his actions by saying that a group
of youths were making too much noise and that there were too many
immigrants, drugs and drunkenness in the neighbourhood
(L'Humanite 28.11.92).

IRR European Race Audit no 2 1992. Contact: Liz Fekete, Institute
of Race Relations, 2-6 Leeke Street, London WC1X 9HS Tel: ++ 071
837 0041