2023-05-13 04:04:26
He will have spent more time in prison than on the football fields. Found guilty of having eliminated his mentor in banditry, Charles Ravet, a former semi-professional footballer in Switzerland, was sentenced this Friday to 20 years’ imprisonment by the Lyon Assize Court.
The court did not accept the thesis of fatal blows without intention to kill, put forward by the former sportsman. “Everything happened as you organized it,” explained the president of the court Raphaël Vincent when delivering the verdict.
During his trial, Charles Ravet admitted to having killed Julien Lorini, described by the prosecution as “one of the main drug traffickers” in the Lyon area. But the accused assures that he “did not want it”. “If I could change things, I would,” he said before the close of proceedings, apologizing to the family.
“He is without remorse, without guilt, without empathy”
As the hearing progressed, he described a fight that allegedly turned out badly. He also admitted having thrown his body into Lake Geneva, after having unsuccessfully tried to bury it in a forest near the Lyon region, “in panic”. He transported the corpse, wrapped in down, in the trunk of his car parked for two days in an underground car park near Geneva, before buying a canoe. On Lake Geneva, he rowed for more than an hour from a channel he knew. The body was never found.
On Friday morning, the Advocate General; Éric Mazaud had requested 25 years in prison, believing that the crime had been premeditated “for a long time, probably several months before”. “He is without remorse, without guilt, without empathy. He is clinical, he is cold, ”described the Advocate General.
“My life was at stake here, or the life of one of my relatives”, defended the accused while recounting the scene. “He goes into a black rage, he grabs me by the neck. This is where the fight breaks out,” he said. “If I feel attacked, I hit, I’ve always been like that”. For the defense, the victim was “a dangerous man”. “He had the will to take over in the fight, he did not have the will to kill him”, pleaded Me Jean-Félix Luciani, arguing that his client had not wanted to kill him.
By choosing to meet in his parents’ cellar, in Villeurbanne, Charles Ravet was “on familiar ground”, rather pointed out Éric Mazaud, who insisted on the most compromising elements: the purchase of a bag of bed and a baseball bat, two hours before the crime.
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