It was a matter of time before the perpetrator of the assault on Kheira Hamraoui confessed. The police had arrested two weeks ago the four men who participated in the brutal attack ten months ago, whom they had been questioning for days. They had no doubt that all of them had participated in the assault on the car in which Aminata Diallo and Kheira Hamraoui were traveling, and they had also confessed to it, but none of them wanted, from the outset, to admit to being the perpetrator of the blows.
Now, Le Parisien has had access to the police reports of those interrogations in which, finally, one of them gave in to the police and acknowledged being the perpetrator: “It was me who carried the iron bar and it was me who hit Kheira Hamraoui while my accomplice kept Aminata Diallo at bay. I hit him twice on the leg," said one of those arrested, 19 years old.
Thanks to the work of the investigators during these interrogations, the fifth man has been arrested, the one who would have been in charge of hiring the four assailants. As explained by the perpetrator of the attack, a stranger who introduced himself as a friend of a Diallo cousin approached him to hire him: "He wanted us to pretend to attack Aminata Diallo and attack Kheira Hamraoui."
After several investigations, the police managed to arrest this fifth man, in his twenties, on Monday, who was admitted to preventive detention on Wednesday accused of aggravated violence and criminal association. He has not acknowledged the facts, but the Prosecutor's Office found sufficient evidence to justify his entry into prison.
The charges against him are the same as those attributed to Aminata Diallo, who was released on probation after spending five days in jail. Of the other four men who were arrested, two were also released on parole and two others remain in prison.
The four men, born between 1999 and 2003, implicated Aminata Diallo during her police custody, presenting her as "the sponsor of violence, to allow her to occupy the position of victim in future competitions," according to the Versailles prosecutor's office.
