'Someone must pay': heartfelt plea of innocent man who spent four years in a French jail
Last Monday the court of appeal in Paris heard evidence about how much compensation the state should pay Foued, who was wrongly convicted as a teenager of having taken part in a 2016 attack on police officers at Viry-Châtillon in the southern suburbs of the capital. During the hearing Foued set out in grim detail the impact that spending four-and-a-half-years behind bars for a crime he did not commit has had both on his life and those around him. But as Pascale Pascariello reports, his distress did not appear to elicit much sympathy in court.
FouedFoued lost everything. Wrongly accused and then convicted as a teenager of taking part in an attack on the police at Viry-Châtillon in the southern suburbs of Paris in 2016 – which left two officers badly burned – he spent four-and-a-half years behind bars despite being innocent. He was only finally acquitted in April 2021 after it was found that police officers investigating the case had truncated and distorted witness statements, leading to a number of wrongful convictions.
