'Omar killed me': Omar Raddad, exonerated? The Court of Revision has delivered its verdict

Will Omar Raddad ever be exonerated, thirty years after the murder of wealthy sixty-something Ghislaine Marchal? A new expertise of DNA traces had relaunched the investigations, but the review court returned a sharp verdict...

Omar Raddad , the ex-gardener of Ghislaine Marchal, found dead in the cellar of her villa more than thirty years ago, had filed a new motion for review of his trial with the Court of Cassation. But the man convicted of the murder of the wealthy widow of an automotive supplier saw its second request for review rejected on October 11 . The investigative committee of the Court of Revision has declared the application inadmissible , while the ex-gardener insistently proclaims his innocence. Omar Raddad's lawyer, Me Sylvie Noachovitch, said to herself ' scandalized ' by this decision. But the legal battle is not over. According to The Parisian , the woman in law claims to want go to the European Court of Human Rights .

New elements discovered in the case

More than thirty years after the death of Ghislaine Marchal , new elements had revived the murder investigation , in 2021. A nouvelle expertise des traces DNA identified in 2015 led to the discovery of footprints of four unidentified men on the two doors where the inscriptions had been written: ' Omar killed me ' and ' Omar m'a t ' with the blood of Ghislaine Marchal. Remember that the rich widow of an automotive supplier had been found dead , in the cellar of his villa in Mougins, in 1991. His gardener Omar Raddad had been sentenced to 18 years of criminal imprisonment for his murder, before being partially pardoned about Jacques Chirac in 1996, and had passed seven years in prison .

'PARGIED BUT NOT INNOCENT'. 30 years after the murder of Ghislaine Marchal, the Omar Raddad case relaunched after DNA expertise.
In 2003, interviewed by Thierry Ardisson in 'Everyone talks about it', Omar Raddad proclaimed his innocence after seven years behind bars. pic.twitter.com/P4WBkr2cGj

— Ina.fr (@Inafr_officiel) June 22, 2021

Another DNA found at the crime scene

Laurent Breniaux, the expert behind the discovery of these new elements, had noted the presence of a complete male DNA (which is not according to Omar Raddad) at more than thirty occurrences at the crime scene, including in the blood used to write the inscriptions . How to explain the presence of this DNA? The expert leans towards ' assumptions of direct or indirect primary transfer at the time of the events ', that is, it would have been deposited by the author of the inscriptions . Other DNA traces not being those of Omar Raddad had already been found at the crime scene before. But in 2002, the Court of Revision had refused a new trial .