The appeal trial of therape of 36” – two police officers charged with raping a Canadian tourist at the then headquarters of the Parisian PJ (judicial police), 36 quai des Orfèvres – begins Tuesday before the Assize Court of Val-de-Marne, eight years after the facts.
In January 2019 at first instance in Paris, Antoine Quirin, 43, and Nicolas Redouane, 52, were sentenced to seven years in prison, after being found guilty of the gang rape of Emily Spanton, now aged 42 years old. The two former members of the prestigious Research and Intervention Brigade (BRI), who dispute the facts of which they are accused, immediately appealed. This appeal trial has already been postponed twice: in March 2020, due to the coronavirus pandemic, then in June 2021 following the hospitalization of a defense lawyer, Me Thierry Herzog.
The complainant, who came both times from Canada, will once again be present on Tuesday for the proceedings. “Mr. Redouane strongly hopes to prove his innocence before the Assize Court. This story has destroyed both his professional life and his personal life.Pascal Garbarini, one of the defense lawyers, told AFP.
I thought I’d be safe there
The facts, which had fed the headlines in the press, date back to the night of April 22, 2014. This Tuesday evening, Emily Spanton, a Canadian tourist passing through Paris, came to have a drink in an Irish pub in the Saint- Michel, opposite the headquarters of the Parisian judicial police, now relocated next to the Batignolles judicial court (17th arrondissement).
In this bar, she meets several BRI police officers. The atmosphere is flirtatious and the agents offer him a night visit to the famous “36”. – “Fancy depositions” – “I was drunk, I knew I couldn’t find my hotel. I told myself that at least, in a police station, I could not drink again and that I would return once sober“, she explained to the court at first instance. “I thought I would be safe there.”
“She’s a cougher (orgy, editor’s note). Hurry up”
She will come out of the PJ HQ more than an hour later, in a state of shock, to denounce a rape. The tourist affirms that, in an office of the “36”, the defendants would have forced her to drink a glass of whiskey and would have imposed oral sex and vaginal penetrations on her. One of the defendants, Nicolas Redouane, admitted fellatio from the complainant, but assured that she was consenting. During the evening, he texted a colleague inviting him to join him: “she’s a cougher (orgy, editor’s note). Dispatch”.
The DNA of the other policeman, Antoine Quirin, was found inside Emily Spanton’s vagina. He talked about consented digital penetration. At first instance, the Paris Assize Court had motivated its conviction in particular by “the constant declarations of the young woman“, conversely lambasting the “evolving, fanciful and not very credible depositionss” of the accused.
The police have “act like trooperss”, had denounced at the hearing the Advocate General Philippe Courroye. “That night they weren’t the police but unworthy bracer usurpers and they behaved like those they chase“. The two men face a maximum sentence of twenty years in prison. The verdict will be delivered on April 22.