Omar Raddad Affair

The Omar Raddad Affair was a highly publicised criminal trial in Mougins, France in 1991. After the murder of Ghislaine Marchal, Marchal's gardener Omar Raddad was arrested. Defended at his trial by Jacques Vergès, Raddad was convicted 1994, and sentenced to 18 years in prison. Raddad always maintained his innocence. Raddad received a partial pardon from French President Jacques Chirac in 1996 at the request of Moroccan King Hassan II, which reduced his sentence to 4 years and 8 months, and was released from prison in 1998.

The misspelled sentence "Omar m'a tuer" ("Omar to kill me"), found written in blood at the crime scene, became a widely used phrase in French society during the 1990s. The last word of the sentence is not properly conjugated; it should read: "Omar m'a tuée". Skeptics contended that this is an odd mistake for a native French speaker to make. The mistake is understandable, however, since both tuer and tuée are pronounced [ty.e]. The case was the subject of the 2011 film Omar m'a tuer by Roschdy Zem.

References

Lichfield, John (3 August 2010). "Who really killed Ghislaine Marchal?". The Independent.

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