A 49-year-old Congolese illegal migrant in France, accused of sexually assaulting a police officer at the Mesnil-Amelot detention center, appeared before the Meaux Criminal Court on Monday. He reportedly told the authorities while in police custody, “I want to fuck, I wanted to fuck.”
The defendant, who is subject to an obligation to leave French territory (OQTF), was arrested on May 13 following the alleged assault and has been held in pre-trial detention since. He had previously been placed in the Mesnil-Amelot detention center on April 5 after serving time in prison.
As reported by Le Parisien, the Congolese national smiled in the courtroom but refused to speak and ignored all questions put to him, prompting judges to postpone the trial until June 27.
The court heard how the defendant had stripped naked in a courthouse holding cell on Friday, forcing a magistrate to reprimand him.
Deputy prosecutor Myriam Khouas described him as a danger to public safety, citing a criminal record that includes six prior convictions, among them a previous sexual assault. “Obviously, he is dangerous,” she said.
The victim, a police officer working at the detention center, attended the hearing but could not bring herself to testify. “It’s just the fact of seeing him,” she said from the back of the courtroom.
Defense attorney Caroline Desré requested that the court order a psychiatric evaluation, arguing that the accused had previously been declared criminally irresponsible due to a mental disorder in a 2018 case heard by the Paris Criminal Court. At that time, he was involuntarily committed to a psychiatric unit.
Desré also criticized an earlier police psychiatric report, which concluded the defendant was fit to stand trial, claiming the expert had not even heard her client speak. “The psychiatrist who met him in police custody says that everything is fine, while he didn’t even hear my client’s voice,” she said.
According to the defense, the only words the man has uttered since his arrest were during custody, when he reportedly stated: “I want to fuck, I wanted to fuck.”
The court granted the request for a psychiatric assessment.
The man will remain in custody until his rescheduled trial in late June.
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