The main suspect in the Sihem case admitted to investigators that he killed the high school student, who disappeared 8 days ago in the Gard. Aged 40, he maintained, according to his words, a sentimental relationship with the young woman.
The man that investigators had taken into custody and suspected of being behind Sihem’s disappearance has confessed. After indicating that he had killed the 18-year-old high school student, he was taken to the Nîmes courthouse and indicted. Who is this man ? What do we know about him at this stage of the investigation? According to the first elements, which were made public by The Parisian and Free lunch, the suspect is called Mahfoud Hansali, he is 39 years old. He is known to the police for past involvement in several cases: 13 convictions are on his criminal record, including the most serious for theft with violence and burglary.
Before being suspected in the Sihem case and his placement in police custody, Mahfoud Hansali was about to appear before the Gard Assize Court on February 1 for “kidnapping and forcible confinement”. The 40-year-old is suspected in this case of having committed a theft in December 2010 in Laval-Pradel, near La Grand-Combe, and of having kidnapped and locked up a person to facilitate the burglary. Le Parisien wrote at the end of January that this individual was described as “a boss in the Gard”, from the small town of Salles-du-Gardon.
Mahfoud Hansali was suspected of being behind Sihem’s disappearance, Le Midi Libre still reports, but the gendarmes had in mind his involvement in drug trafficking which could have led the young woman to leave her home, against a background sentimental relationship with the respondent. But Mahfoud Hansali delivered another version to the investigators: according to him, he had a relationship with the high school student; he specified that the young woman was “in love with him”, but that he did not assume this relationship because Sihem was the cousin of his former companion.
Mahfoud Hansali told the gendarmes and the investigating judge that during an argument on January 25, he tried to silence Sihem by putting his hand over her mouth. A gesture that would have led to suffocation. The man himself took the investigators to a forest where he deposited the body, a place near his home.