The Mazan rape trial is set to resume on Monday, September 16, but the main accused, Dominique Pélicot, will “certainly not” be present at the hearing for health reasons. His lawyer, however, refuses to see the trial postponed.
Dominique Pélicot will not be back at the hearing of the Mazan rape trial. The man, and main accused in the case, who drugged his wife to rape her and deliver her to strangers who also abused her is “not fit to appear” this Monday, September 16, his lawyer, Béatrice Zavarro, announced on Franceinfo. The septuagenarian who had been complaining of pain since last week is suffering from “a clot in the bladder and an infection in the right kidney” according to his lawyer. The diagnosis was made on Sunday evening after the main accused was hospitalized.
Dominique Pélicot’s absence from the trial has lasted for almost a week. The man was excused from the hearing last Tuesday and on Wednesday it was the president of the Vaucluse criminal court, Roger Arata, who decided to suspend the hearing until Friday after receiving the conclusions of a medical expert report concerning Dominique Pélicot. The latter recommended “the implementation of appropriate treatment, with possible hospitalization, and a possible release date on Monday”. The man appeared weakened at the hearing last week, holding his head in his hands. The lawyer also denounced “completely deficient” medical care: “we have been led up the garden path by the prison administration and the medical profession for over a week now, and if things had been done very quickly, we would not be here today”.
The suspension is likely to be extended this Monday in the absence of Dominique Pélicot. Which raises the question of the possible postponement of the case. The president of the court, Roger Arata, warned last week: “Either Pélicot is there and we continue. If he is not there for one, two or three days, we will extend the suspension. But if he is permanently unavailable, it is the postponement of the case.”
The Mazan rape trial cannot continue without the presence of the main accused. However, he is not the next one to have to speak in court. His ex-wife, Gisèle Pélicot, the main victim, and his children must be questioned when the trial resumes. But the latter refused to speak in the absence of the accused last Thursday, and may again want to wait for the return of the accused. It is also difficult to take an interest in the 50 co-accused in the absence of the main accused who orchestrated everything. Impossible, for example, to question Jean-Pierre M, who allegedly raped his wife with Dominique Pélicot, because the two men accuse each other of being behind the acts.
Suspension extended or trial postponed?
Dominique Pélicot’s lawyer, while confirming her client’s absence from the trial on Monday, is not considering adjourning the trial to a later date. A suspension of a few days, the time to follow the treatment prescribed to Dominique Pélicot, should be enough to make the accused’s return to court possible according to her. With the septuagenarian’s ailments diagnosed, she is talking about a delay of one to three days before Dominique Pélicot returns to court on Franceinfo.
Asked whether her client might seek to avoid trial, Me Béatrice Zavarro formally refutes this hypothesis: “Since the beginning of this information and since the beginning of his trial, [Dominique Pélicot] always said he wanted to appear, he never decided to back out.” And the lawyer added on BFMTV that his client wishes to appear at the trial: “We are in a situation where he did not order his body so that the ailments could appear. He is in a state that he is undergoing […] “All he needs is the right care for the trial to resume.”
There is therefore no question of postponing the trial according to the lawyer. “We are not going to waste four months for a treatment that can be effective quite quickly” in the space of 24 to 72 hours, she added on Franceinfo. The Mazan rape trial is actually scheduled to last four months until December 13, but with the delay already accumulated, the hearings could extend beyond that date. A postponement of the case would therefore involve “resetting everything: a schedule, the availability of the courtroom… And what about those who are in detention? Because at that time, I can assume that there will be requests for release,” said Dominique Pélicot’s lawyer.