Four years after a first verdict, the Assize Court of Seine-Saint-Denis is looking again, from this Monday, on the tragic death of Said Bourarach. Quite rare, Dan Lampel, sentenced, in his absence, to 9 years’ imprisonment in March 2015, asked to be retried.
In March 2010, to escape his attackers, Saïd Bourarach, a security guard at the Batkor store in Bobigny, jumped into the Ourcq canal and drowned. The four accused had been sentenced to 4 to 9 years in prison. Feeling the wind turn, Dan Lampel and his uncle Lucien Dadoun had fled before the verdict. Lampel had taken the first flight to Israel.
Extradited from Israel in January
Not without difficulty, the French State managed to obtain, in January, his extradition. The accused had sought refuge in the coastal town of Netanya, where he was soon caught up in court for a drug case. When France requests his extradition in 2016, Dan Lampel is already in detention.
His family files an appeal in 2018 to the Israeli Supreme Court. Without success. He was extradited to France at the start of the year and imprisoned. The other fugitive is still on the run.
This Monday, Dan Lampel will therefore be alone in the accused’s box. His former accomplices, who have already served their sentences, will be heard as mere witnesses.
He came to buy a can of paint
“Dan Lampel could acquiesce in the sentence of 9 years pronounced by default and avoid a new trial. Through the remission of sentence, he could have waited and asked for an adjustment to his sentence, explains, Me Patrick Klugman, his new lawyer. But he chose to be retried to be completely at peace. “
He is prosecuted for intentional violence which resulted in death without intention to give it, committed in a meeting, with a weapon. Dan Lampel came to buy a paint bucket from Batkor. The DIY store was about to close and the security guard refused to let him in.
He had returned, furious, shirtless, with his brother, uncle, and a fourth man to sort it out. The altercation had turned to drama, and the vigilante, run by the gang, had plunged into the canal that flows behind the store.
The racist nature of the unsuccessful aggression
Nine years after the death of Saïd Bourarach, all the parties hope that the buzzing atmosphere that prevailed during the first trial will have subsided. “It was a caricature of the trial. We tried to make it a case of racism, ”denounces Me Klugman.
