Sihem Belouahmia, 18, has been wanted since January 25 in the Gard, when her relatives have not heard from her. A man and his ex-girlfriend have been in custody since January 31. The track of the kidnapping is privileged.
What happened on the night of January 25 to 26 at Salles-du-Gardon? Where is Sihem Belouahmia? According to the first elements of the investigation, this young 18-year-old woman left the social housing occupied by her grandmother Fatima, 95, on the evening of Wednesday, January 25. The schoolgirl’s father said that her mother heard her come home around 11 p.m. and then come out of the apartment a few minutes later. She would have only retrieved her phone without taking any belongings or identity papers. However, since that evening, his relatives have not heard from him.
The investigation into the disappearance of the young woman which occurred in the small town of Salles-du-Gardon in the Gard seems to be progressing, however, reported the Parisian. After several days of investigations, the prosecution reclassified the facts of the worrying disappearance “in criminal proceedings for kidnapping and forcible confinement”, indicated the public prosecutor in charge of the case. The Nîmes prosecutor’s office therefore resumed the investigations around this disturbing disappearance. According to information obtained by the daily, a 39-year-old man was taken into police custody on Tuesday January 31 by the gendarmes of the Nîmes research section. The ex-companion of the suspect would also be heard by the gendarmes.
The trail of kidnapping with privileged sequestration
According to information from Parisian, Sihem allegedly got into the suspect’s car on the evening of his disappearance; he has since been taken into custody after two searches of his home. A man with a profile described as “bad boy” whose high school student “would be a little in love or even under the influence”. The man knew Sihem’s family well because it would “of his family by marriage” specified the Figaro.
This man, Mahfoud H., is well known to the police. This Wednesday, February 1, the suspect was to be presented to the Assize Court of Gard for as part of a kidnapping case, the facts of which date from 2011. “He was free until then and it is in this context -there that he would have participated in this kidnapping”, indicated a judicial source to Figaro. The trial will therefore be postponed to a later date in view of the situation.
Mahfoud H. was also convicted in 2015 for organized gang robberies and armed robberies in the Alès region in 2012. In total, he would have been convicted 13 times by the courts and was imprisoned for the first time when he was a minor according to the elements ofGard objective.
On Monday, January 30, the family’s lawyer declared that “the investigators have sufficient elements to think that Sihem did not disappear of his own free will (…) Each passing moment takes us a little further from the truth and this causes terrible suffering for parents and loved ones. We hope to have a happy ending,” said Me Sara Benlefki, from the Paris Bar.
A rally outside the court on February 1
About sixty people were gathered in front of the Palais de Justice in Nîmes where the trial of the suspect was to be held in the context of a case of kidnapping and theft dating from 2011, the date of the trial was therefore postponed later in view of the ongoing investigation. On the placards were written messages of support for Sihem: “Justice for Sihem”, “Give us back Sihem”.