“What did your daughter experience?” asks Audrey Debeugny, the president of the Loir-et-Cher criminal court. “She hasn’t experienced anything, apart from the nightmare,” replies Halima El Bakhti. Little Inass Touloub's "nightmare" was her own mother. On the fifth day of her trial, Friday November 6, the 72-year-old accused was finally heard on the facts. Namely: “acts of torture and barbarity leading to death without intention of causing it” on his daughter, found tortured to death on August 11, 1987, along the A10 motorway, at the age of 4.
The septuagenarian, who faces life imprisonment, approaches the microphone, dressed in her beige overcoat, which she almost never takes off, a white veil tied around her face. The president begins by taking the accused more than forty back. A photo found at her home, from the seals, is shown at the hearing. “Was it taken in Morocco?” asks the magistrate. The accused agrees: “In 1984 or 1985.” And describes: “There is my mother, my sister and me in the middle.” The three women are surrounded by children, the scene seems joyful.
“Then there is little Inass,” continues Halima El Bakhti, as if she were talking about someone else’s child. The little girl is standing, dressed in a white dress, short black hair, her large eyes wide open. Far from his damaged face, which circulated for a long time to illustrate his wanted poster. She appears to be about 1 year old. Until now, only one photo of the living little girl had been shown to the hearing, showing her at around the same age, with her maternal grandmother.
She was the one who raised her, the first year of her life. However, Halima El Bakhti would have wanted, she swears, to bring her daughter back to the family home, in the Paris region, after her delivery on July 3, 1983 in Casablanca. She claims to have wanted Inass, like all her other children. “Did you like it?” asks the president. “Of course,” retorts the accused.
A broken bond with his daughter
But just after giving birth, her husband wants her to return without her newborn, to help him in his butcher's shop in Vitry-sur-Seine (Val-de-Marne), a small business that he runs just below the family apartment. At the time, Halima El Bakhti was opposed to it, she says, and explained, according to her story, that she wanted to stay there with her family and return to her job as a teacher that she loved so much.
In vain. She leaves with her two eldest children and leaves the baby with her "poor" mother, although she is "tired and a little old". “When I arrived at Orly, I felt that there was something in me that had left, I am not whole,” relates the septuagenarian, who returned the following summer, in 1984, to recover Inass. “When I arrived, my daughter didn’t recognize me, I didn’t recognize her either,” she says. Halima El Bakhti's discomfort with her child seems to have set in from that moment on. The accused was then 30 years old and had just given birth to a little boy a few months earlier, her fourth child.
When she arrived in France, Inass "cries, she doesn't want me to change her." "When I give her food, she vomits. She doesn't speak, she doesn't want to play. She doesn't want anything. Absolutely nothing," says her mother on the stand. Alongside her sisters and her little brother, the little girl found herself in a tiny apartment in Puteaux (Hauts-de-Seine), where the family moved in April 1985.
The accused still seems to be thinking about what might have been going on in her daughter's head at that moment. “She did not accept being removed from the environment she was in. It was strange for her,” says Halima El Bakhti. And added: “I would like to know why it was like that between my daughter and me”, putting her feelings and those of her child on the same level.
“I was dead too”
“The 'why' is important. But we would like to understand the 'how' already,” cuts the president. “Yes…” breathes the accused, plaintive. She locks up when it comes to naming the abuse she inflicted on Inass. And adopt the same posture as during instruction. “Bite, I don’t remember. Slap yes, hit yes,” she says, without saying more.
“The pathologist described multiple injuries. Fractures, old and recent, bites, old and recent, bruises, hematomas, burns,” the president lists in one go. “At that time, I didn’t know what I was doing…” answers Halima El Bakhti. Silence. “I was able to do all that, it’s awful,” says the septuagenarian in a sad voice. “When my little one died, I was dead too. I don’t remember anything,” she adds.
The exchange continues, the president tries to make her waver. “You heard the medical examiner. The wounds hurt, they make you cry. Inass, no doubt she couldn't sit down, when we see the state of her buttocks,” blurted the magistrate. No direct response.
"She died from repeated violence over time. These acts of violence led to hemorrhages, bleeding. It's a secondary death, due to chronic abuse. Do you understand?" relaunches Audrey Debeugny a little later. “It got worse between her and me. Time passes and we move away,” replies Halima El Bakhti, evasively. “The farther away you go, the more violent it gets on her?” continues the president. “I think so, unfortunately,” the accused responds in a weak voice. Nothing helps: Halima El Bakhti remains walled in deep denial.
She assures that she did not push Inass down the stairs
However, she is very affirmative on one point: on August 10, 1987, she did not push her daughter down the stairs leading to the cellar of their home, as her eldest daughter declared to investigators. She was 9 years old when her little sister died.
The accused is particularly vague about this evening. She claims to have prepared the sandwiches for the whole family, even though she had just given birth to her fifth child, a little boy, around ten days before. A stay in Morocco seemed planned. While the father of the child, Ahmed Touloub – prosecuted for “complicity” – told investigators that he found his daughter lying on the sofa that evening, his ex-wife gives another version.
"We went out, we got in the car, we left. Inass lays her head on me. I say to myself: 'she's tired, she's going to sleep'. She doesn't move," she relates. “He [her husband, whom she never names] came to see. She died. It was an earthquake. I didn’t believe it,” recounts the accused, her voice singing. The packed courtroom is completely silent. “He opened the trunk, he took the blanket, he put it in and I saw that he was leaving. He put it on the ground. On the grass,” describes Halima El Bakhti.
“It was only black”
“And what do you explain to your family when you arrive in Morocco?” asks the president. “Before arriving in the boat, he told me to say that we have entrusted her and that we will take her back when we return. That’s what I said,” maintains the accused, who seeks, as soon as she can, to overwhelm her ex-husband. “And that was enough for you to say it?” wonders the magistrate. “At that moment, I didn’t know what to say or not to say. I was dead. I would have hoped that it was me in her place, not her,” maintains the septuagenarian.
The interrogation continues until early evening. “Do you have a happy memory with your daughter?” tries Audrey Debeugny in her last questions. “When we were in Morocco, all three of us,” says her interlocutor, tiredly. Reference to the moments spent after Inass's delivery, with her mother and her baby. “So his very first days… And then?” “Afterwards, no, it was awful, it was just darkness,” regrets Halima El Bakhti, who leaves no room for any form of introspection, visibly incapable of facing what she inflicted on her child.
