After the murder of wealthy widow Ghislaine Marchal in 1991, her gardener Omar Raddad, an illiterate immigrant from Morocco, was arrested.
He has maintained his innocence, and received a partial pardon from French President Jacques Chirac in 1996 at the request of Moroccan King Hassan II, which reduced his sentence to four years and eight months.
Divorced from her first husband, with whom she had a son,[citation needed] in 1991 she was the wealthy widow of Jean-Pierre Marchal, owner of a company that supplied equipment for automobiles.
[1] She divided her time between a primary residence in Switzerland and her villa La Chamade, which she had built in the hills of Mougins, near Cannes, and where she was killed.
Alerted by her and Colette K., a third friend, Francine P., sent an employee of the security company to the house in the early afternoon.
[3] Scrapes on the arms and legs, in particular on the soles of her feet and the back of the knees, as well as traces of dust and cement on the robe, suggested that the victim had been dragged.
[citation needed] Police captain Georges Cenci noted that the assassin seemed "determined, but also clumsy in his movements".
[4] Dr. Jean Pagliuzza, a forensic physician who had been consulted by the defense lawyers, spoke to journalist Eve Livet after Raddad was sentenced.
[1][5] In the original pathology report, the date of death was given as the 24th, when Raddad had an alibi; it was later changed to the 23rd as a correction of what was said to be an error.
[3] The family's lawyer argued that Raddad locked the cellar door on leaving, but that Marchal herself blocked it on the inside in case he returned.
[6] After a request from Moroccan King Hassan II led to a partial pardon in 1996 by then French President Jacques Chirac, he was released in September 1998 after serving four years.
[3] Racism has been alleged; during the trial, the presiding judge told Raddad in Arabic, "Anyone who cannot read or write should hide themselves away in a hole.
However, investigators found examples of writing by Marchal in which the same error is present, and her niece Sabine du Granrut has said that her aunt did not have a post-secondary education.
La construction d'un coupable, by Jean-Marie Rouart, and Pourquoi moi?, by Raddad himself, were the basis of a film by Roschdy Zem, Omar m'a tuer, released in 2011.