A French man pleaded his innocence moments before being killed at the hands of an angry mob on a Madagascan tourist island, an audio recording of his final moments has revealed, reports FRANCE 24.
Sébastien Judalet, from Montreuil, near Paris, was one of two Europeans killed on Thursday by local residents in a lynching on the island of Nosy Be, off the northwest coast of Madagascar.
The mob, said by witnesses to number in the hundreds, suspected the three men of the murder of an eight-year-old local boy.
Judalet and the other European, later named as Franco-Italian Roberto Gianfala, were beaten by the crowd before their bodies were burned on the popular Ambatoloaka beach.
The uncle of the dead boy was also killed and burned later the same day.
In an audio recording taken shortly before his death, excerpts of which were published by French daily Le Parisien, members of the crowd can be heard interrogating Judalet and accusing him of being a paedophile.
Judalet desperately tries to convince the mob he is innocent.
“I am the victim of a conspiracy,” he says. “I do not like children, absolutely not, and I don’t like people who have sex with children.”
Read more of this report from FRANCE 24.