This is the end of a reckoning that has lasted for more than 30 years. Ahmed Bakiri, 51, was found guilty of the murder of Mohamed Benameur and the attempted murder of his brother, Lahcène Benameur, in the parking lot of the Saint-Jean clinic in Montpellier in March 2016.
In accordance with the requisitions of the Advocate General, the court sentenced him to 20 years in prison, accompanied by a security period of 10 years. “I can’t fix anything, except accept my sentence,” said this father without a criminal record just before the jury retired. Apologizing, he also said “hope to be the last” to be part of this four-decade-old cycle of violence between these two families from Lodève (Hérault).
A settling of scores since 1985
The trigger for the hatred between these two families was the theft in 1985 of the wallet of the star host Guy Lux, passing through Lodève for his program “Intervilles”.
Kader Bakiri, owner of the restaurant where the theft took place, took the law into his own hands and shot and injured Mohamed Benameur, a neighbor, whom he considered to be the thief. Five years later, the two men met again and Mohamed Benameur dealt fatal blows to Kader Bakiri.
The two families from Lodève then avoided each other for more than a quarter of a century, before meeting, by chance, in March 2016 in the parking lot of a clinic in Montpellier. Ahmed Bakiri, Kader’s brother, then coldly shot Mohamed Benameur with a bullet in the back of the neck and left his brother for dead, shot in the abdomen.
Like the psychiatric experts in their reports, the Assize Court considered that there had been, in this “well integrated” socially man, “an alteration of discernment” at the time of the events. Otherwise, he would have faced up to 30 years in prison. “I ask you not to drop below 20 years,” however, insisted the Advocate General.
The death of his brother, in 1990, had strongly marked the young Ahmed, who according to the prosecution had buried this hatred for “a quarter of a century”, until it resurfaced dramatically when he met Mohamed Benameur in the parking lot of this clinic.