Bookshop in Seine-Saint-Denis, Marie-Neige Sardin was attacked twenty six times in seven years. She resists, while deploring the abandonment of the justice system.Go to Islam vs. Europe to read the whole thing.
No question for Marie-Neige Sardin, 54, of leaving her little bookshop in Bourget. Despite the vio¬lence and the intimidation, despite the shop-owners who used to be alongside her leaving, this energetic woman wants to yield nothing to her attackers. “In France an enormous number of people are living through what I live through in my banlieue”, she writes in the book she has just published. In it she denounces the weaknesses of a justice system that is too accommodating to delinquents. A shocking testimony.
Why have you written this book?
To serve witness. To what I’ve gone through and what other victims have lived through and are still living through, those who don’t have the means to make it known.
What have you gone through?
Twenty six attacks in seven years, some with extreme vio¬lence. I was raped. Don’t ask me to talk about it.
When was this?
22 June 2004. I had filed a complaint about an initial attack, in January the same year. Two men armed with a pistol and a tear gas canister stole the contents of the till and the scratch card games. I received a blow from the butt of the gun that time, which opened up a wound on my scalp. I was covered in blood. The rape took place a few days before a confrontation that was due to take place within the context of this affair. There were four of them. They said to me: “Withdraw your complaint. If not, we’ll do the same thing to your daughter.”
You recognised some of your attackers?
Yes, the head of the gang, on the police sheet. In my book I designate him with the initial G. He is known to the police for attacks, thefts, damage… I also identified one of the attackers. But it served no purpose.
What happened?
With the break-in, the children’s judge dismissed the case. His mother and sister swore that G was sleeping at their house when the incident occurred. It was their word against mine. Theirs weighed more heavily than mine.
But there were witnesses… Yes, a father accompanied by his two children. In the end he abandoned his testimony, the two robbers threatened to attack his children … Two years later, G’s sister came for a package in the shop. I asked her why she swore that her brother was sleeping during the robbery. “I cover for him,” she told me. There was a priest in the shop at the time. He testified to what he had heard, but the case wasn’t reopened.
And with the rape?
There, too, the suspect said he wasn’t involved: he was sleeping at his brother’s house. The fingerprints the police took just after the rape couldn’t contradict him. So the judge dismissed the case, because of the lack of proof. Which didn’t prevent the gang in question from boasting all over the district about how they had raped me. A building security guard even went to the police to tell them about it, but nothing happened.
More on this story. This Middle East Online report has additional information, but has a markedly different emphasis from the prior report. Here, Muslims have supposedly thrown up their hands in disillusionment with French democracy, which has "failed" them, turning instead to Islam, even as the report acknowledges "many residents are drawn to an Islamic identity rather than simply rejecting or failing to find a secular one."Click on the title to read the story at Jihad Watch.