Seven days following her disappearance in Salles-du-Gardon, a small town north of Gard, Sihem, an 18-year-old high school student has still not given any sign of life. Now seized of the case, the public prosecutor from Nîmes, Cécile Gensac, received, on Wednesday, family members of the young woman. These came from a delegation that had come to show its support in silence in front of the Nîmes courthouse.
Two people are still in custody in this case, one of which has a particularly worrying profile. This forty-year-old man has been convicted 13 times. The last time in 2015 by the Assize Court of Gard, to twelve years of criminal imprisonment for a series of robberies. Placed under judicial control since his release from prison, he was to appear on Wednesday for another case, still at the Gard assizes: the home-jacking with kidnapping of a couple of traders. Given his potential involvement in Sihem’s disappearance, the trial was postponed.
Towards the opening of a judicial investigation this Thursday
This “man is questioned regarding a participation in the disappearance”, specifies the public prosecutor. The other person taken into custody is his ex-partner. “She might have information allowing her to be located, or at the very least to advance the investigations. It is understood as the head of non-assistance to person in danger”, specifies Cécile Gensac. Both knew the young woman. “We know that he was in contact with her shortly before her disappearance,” said Sihem’s family lawyer, Mourad Battikh. So we know that he would have an implication. What implication? It is still too early to tell today”.
Their police custody, extended for the first time, will end this Thursday at noon. At the end of this, “the opening of a judicial investigation is envisaged, continues the prosecutor. The investigations will then continue under the control and direction of an investigating magistrate. This will decide on their possible indictment.
A kidnapping for the purpose of obtaining funds?
Initially opened for worrying disappearance, the investigation was quickly reclassified as the head of arrest, kidnapping, sequestration or arbitrary detention of hostages to obtain the execution of an order or condition. The gendarmerie group of Gard and the research section of Nimes, favor the thesis of a kidnapping for financial reasons. ” Elements [peuvent] to suggest a disappearance in connection with facts aimed at obtaining funds, ”continues the public prosecutor.
