The North Assize Court have sentenced four people to 10 to 20 years in prison for torturing little Yanis, a 2-year-old child to death, AFP reports.
According to the report, the North Assize Court on Friday sentenced four people to 10 to 20 years in prison for torturing little Yanis to death for two weeks. The boy’s mother was sentenced to four years in prison for lack of protection.
Considered the “leader” of the group, the main defendant, was found guilty of “acts of torture and barbarism” and was sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment with a two-thirds security sentence, and a socio-judicial follow-up of 10 years.
The Court thus followed the requisitions of the General Prosecutor’s Office.
“Unheard-of violence exercised gratuitously”
The man whom little Yanis was entrusted to by his mother in Auberchicourt (North), in December 2018, tortured him for 15 days, the lawyer general said.
During alcoholic evenings involving the defendants to varying degrees, the child had notably been tied up with scotch tape, used “like a football”, trampled on, pushed down the stairs or deprived of sleep.
The companion of this man, also torture Little Yanis and was sentenced to 15 years of criminal imprisonment and a socio-judicial follow-up of five years. The couple is completely deprived of parental authority over their five daughters. At the statement of this verdict, the woman collapsed in the box in tears.
Two other men, distant relatives who had participated in the torture, were sentenced to 12 and 10 years imprisonment.
The mother loses parental authority
The mother, accused in particular of not having denounced the violence and of not having had the child treated immediately after recovering it, was sentenced to four years imprisonment, a sentence which could be adjusted. She is deprived of parental authority over her two sons. The Advocate General had in her case demanded six years in prison, with a warrant of committal.
A last relative was sentenced to four years in prison, two of which were suspended for “non-assistance” to this child in danger.
Now seven years old, he suffers from significant neurological and psychological sequelae, according to his lawyer, Me Alain Reisenthel. “It took him a year to learn what a smile was, two years to relearn how to walk.”
Hospitalized on December 18, he had been placed in an artificial coma, suffering from severe head trauma, numerous hematomas and fractures of the pelvis and tibia.