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Gardener's conviction for French heiress murder to be reviewed

Omar Raddad, a Moroccan national who was found guilty in 1994 of the murder of wealthy heiress Ghislaine Marchal, for whom he worked as a gardener, who received a presidential pardon and who has continued to protest his innocence for more than 25 years, has finally won a lengthy judicial battle to have the case reviewed. 

La rédaction de Mediapart

This article is freely available.

A Moroccan gardener convicted of the gruesome murder of a rich French widow 30 years ago has won his bid to reopen the case and try to clear his name, reports BBC News.

In one of France's most notorious murder cases, Omar Raddad, now 59, was found guilty of stabbing to death his employer, Ghislaine Marchal, 65.

The case hinged on a blood-scrawled message on a door by her mutilated body, reading: "Omar killed me".

But the note contained a glaring grammatical mistake.

Instead of using the past participle verb for "killed" (tuée), the inscription used the infinitive (tuer).

Mr Raddad's lawyers argued that he had been framed because Marchal - a wealthy and well-educated woman - would never have made such an error.

The case has long gripped France, drawing accusations that Mr Raddad, an immigrant, was the victim of discrimination. Books and films depicted the conviction as a miscarriage of justice.

In 1996, two years after he was sentenced to 18 years in jail, Mr Raddad was partly pardoned by then-French President Jacques Chirac.

He was freed from prison but his conviction was never overturned.

Read more of this report from BBC News.