Mohamed Haouas, international pillar of the French rugby team and Montpellier HR, came out at least partly relieved this Friday from the Montpellier courthouse (Hérault). He was given an 18-month suspended prison sentence and a fine of 15,000 euros for a series of burglaries perpetrated in tobacco shops in Montpellier and its region. The judges took up exactly the requisitions of the public prosecutor. They found him guilty of all the charges, namely five burglaries in an organized gang perpetrated at the beginning of 2014 and acts of violence, in particular a “physical” percussion to overthrow a police officer and escape.
Throughout the investigation, and still at the helm, the 27-year-old rugby player, now an international, remained silent and never wanted to acknowledge the facts despite the materiality of a particularly extensive judicial file. “Objectively on three of these facts, you have the concrete elements, which can accredit his presence on the spot” admitted Me Marc Gallix, his lawyer, who has developed a defense strategy so that this pillar is never found wanting on the facts themselves.
His DNA, found on a headlamp, and one of his fingerprints inside a car that was used to transport the cartons of cigarettes had led the police to take an interest in this young man from the poor neighborhood of Petit Bard. His massive figure perfectly matched the face of one of the four thieves who terrorized tobacconists between January and April 2014.
“He wasn’t there”
“My fingerprints in the car? I just once helped carry heavy boxes of cigarettes. I didn’t even know they were stolen,” Mohammed said during the investigation. The second alleged actor in these burglaries, Mohamed Sallat, arrested in flagrante delicto with the bag of cartridges in his hand, exonerated the young athlete. “He was not there,” he assured, without being able to give the names of the two other accomplices himself.
For more than two hours of hearing, in front of Philippe Saint-André, the general manager of the MHR, who came to support him, Mohamed Haouas tried to retrace his own journey. “With my mother, we lived in a home. Little Bard, at the time, was a dangerous neighborhood and I didn’t have an older brother or a father to protect me. I was young and impressionable. It was a vicious circle. Either you stay in this system or you escape. That’s what I did with sport, “said “Momo” Haouas, saved by the Navy, by the French military rugby team, then on track for the career that we know him.
“His pride is also to wear the blue jersey stamped with the rooster of the French team. He has dual French and Algerian nationality and he chose to play in the jersey of the France team, ”argued in particular Me Marc Gallix, who worked to ensure that the legal sanction was not an obstacle in this exceptional course. The other defendant, Mohamed Sallat, was sentenced to 18 months.
