Rapper Moha La Squale will be tried for physical but not sexual violence against ex-partners

A trial was ordered against rapper Moha La Squale before the Paris criminal court for spousal violence or kidnapping committed against six former partners while a dismissal of the case was rendered concerning accusations of sexual assault and rape.

The 29-year-old rapper, whose real name is Mohamed Bellahmed, must appear for violence against six ex-partners between 2017 and 2021, according to the referral order signed by a Parisian investigating judge on March 14, including AFP had knowledge. He defended himself against these accusations on the “This plot was perpetrated to harm me,” he argued in April 2021.

Moha la Squale, on the other hand, benefited from a dismissal of the charges of rape and sexual assault to which he was the subject, denounced by two of the complainants.

The hearing of the case before the criminal court is, however, not final: appeals have been made by several lawyers for the ex-partners, who consider that the facts are criminal, according to several sources close to the case.

Questioned by AFP, Me Pierre-Eugène Burghardt and Sarah Beaucamp, lawyers for a victim, indicated that they had appealed the order, without further comment.

After this decision to abandon the prosecution on the sexual violence part, the defendant's lawyer, Me Elise Arfi, welcomed: “As one could expect, this file, which is a media creation, 'has collapsed on a judicial level.'

“There remain some residual facts, which are in any case totally contested,” she continued. My client is not and has never been a sexual assaulter. I don't know how he will be able to return to normal life after so many ordeals, but I hope he will manage to resume his career where things suddenly stopped."

The rapper was first indicted in June 2021 for sexual assault and violence against ex-partners. In July 2022, he was also indicted for rape, a criminal classification, against another ex-partner. But in the “absence of material evidence to support” these latest accusations, the investigating judge decided to dismiss the case on this aspect.

In her prescription, she emphasizes on the other hand that he is “described by his successive companions as cyclothymic, impulsive, immature, capricious and angry”, traits “probably strongly accentuated by excessive consumption of cannabis”, which are registered “on a paranoid and jealous terrain.

“The combination of these factors led to marked psychological violence against his companions”, sometimes accompanied by “physical acts”, with “slapping, hair pulling, strangling or even suffocation with a pillow ", observes the magistrate. "When he managed to make me say that I was less than nothing... a piece of shit, (...) everything was better for him,” one of the complainants will recount.

“The suffering of my client was heard by the courts,” Antonin Gravelin-Rodriguez, lawyer for a “deeply marked” complainant, told AFP. We hope that justice will be done quickly to allow him to definitively turn this page.”

The investigation was punctuated by the back and forth between freedom and detention of the rapper who made himself known in 2018 as one of the revelations of the year with a first album Bendero acclaimed by the public (gold record, more than 50,000 copies sold) and criticism.

Initially placed under judicial supervision following his indictment in June 2021, Moha la Squale had failed to fulfill his obligations several times, notably by leaving France despite a ban, leading to his incarceration in June 2022. Released a year later and placed under an electronic bracelet, he “escaped” last November and was quickly found in Germany, then placed in pre-trial detention again on February 9. His criminal record includes several convictions.

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