• On the night of 30 to 31 August 2019, Salomé Garnesson was beaten to death. His bruised and swollen body was found wrapped in a carpet, under a pile of rubbish, near the station of Cagnes-sur-Mer.
  • Her death, considered the 100th femicide of 2019 and occurred four days before the opening of the Grenelle against domestic violence, had sparked a wave of emotion and indignation across the France.
  • Amin Mimouni, her companion, who had always denied killing her, finally confessed Monday at the opening of the trial in which he appears for aggravated murder. "I recognize the facts," admitted this "narcissistic" man who would not have supported that she wanted to leave him.

"You were right, I'm too afraid of you to tell you to your face. [...] I would suffer all your violence more. I have made my decision. I love someone who assaults me, hits me, spits on me, strangles me and insults me. I feel dead. Read by the president of the Assize Court of Alpes-Maritimes Monday morning, Salomé Garnesson's last message to her companion sounds like a dark omen. It dates from July 11, 2019. The last day the 21-year-old was able to use her phone. She wanted to end this relationship that had cut her off from the rest of the world. A month and a half later, on the morning of August 31, his bruised, swollen body was found wrapped in a carpet, under a pile of rubbish, near the station of Cagnes-sur-Mer.

The night before, Amin Mimouni, then 26, with whom she had been in a relationship for nine months, allegedly beat her to death. He had always denied it, explaining that there had been an argument, having just left her, but that she was alive when they separated. Monday at the opening of the trial in which he appears for aggravated murder, he finally confessed: "I recognize the facts," he said in a weak voice.


"A young man is slaughtering a girl"

The details just shared by Chief Justice Catherine Bonnici were overwhelming. This night in the summer of 2019, in the rue Garigliano, in Cagnes-sur-Mer, an argument and screams wake up a whole family. The mother described the scene live to police rescue, by phone: "A young man is slaughtering a girl. She screams to death. The victim is beaten and strangled. His executioner jumps on his stomach with both feet, hits his head against the asphalt. Unbearable.

In the room, relatives of Salomé Garnesson, some of whom wear a T-shirt printed with a photo of the young woman, smiling, wipe away tears. A woman, face down, plugs her ears. Others turned, with black eyes, to the accused, whose description perfectly matched that made at the time by the witnesses of the murder: "mixed-race, 1.80 m, frizzy hair styled in a bun". Arms crossed in a colorful patterned jacket, a pair of glasses on his nose, Amin Mimouni does not react.

She could only be identified thanks to her DNA

This outburst of violence was such that the father of the young woman, whose death is related to cranio-facio-cervical trauma according to the conclusions of the coroner, will not be able to identify it. Only a comparison of their two DNA will make it possible to formally confirm that it was indeed Salome.

The body of the young woman will be found by a passerby several hours later, a little before noon, where the murderer had dragged and abandoned the body. A crew of the police, arrived a few minutes after the call of the mother, witness of the scene, had detected nothing. However, they had met Amin Mimouni, who was leaving in the direction of his mother's home, where the couple was installed a few dozen meters away. Their intervention, criticized, had given him to an investigation of the IGPN, at the end of which one of the police officers had received a reprimand.

A young woman under the influence

His death, at the end of the summer of 2019, had sparked a wave of emotion and indignation throughout the France. Considered the 100th victim of femicide that year, the young woman was killed four days before the opening of the Grenelle against domestic violence. And the investigation had made it possible to trace the contours of a toxic relationship, Salomé Garnesson being under the influence of Amin Mimouni.


Witnesses explained that she no longer wore makeup, that she had to wear baggy clothes. He had all his access codes to his social networks. He even ended up depriving her of a phone. The grip was almost total. Displaying an exacerbated jealousy to the point of watching her for long hours at the bakery where she worked after dropping out of school a few months into their relationship, he suspected her of cheating on him. She had finally wanted to leave him. Amin Mimouni, a "narcissistic" man according to a psychiatric expert held to testify Monday, would not have supported it.

Salome was "called to God" according to him.

"He said he was in love, but for him love is perhaps belonging," detailed the expert who did not detect in him "any pathology". She still explains that he "has no empathy for the victim" and that he can present a "social dangerousness", with a risk of recidivism. The accused, in whom there is a "certain trivialization of violence" had already been targeted by a complaint, filed by an ex-girlfriend in 2016, and finally closed without follow-up. Investigators also found several handrails filed by Amin Mimouni's mother against him.

According to a psychologist also questioned by the court in the afternoon, the accused would be very virulent against his former companions, whom he called "little piles of", even more than a year after the murder of Salomé Garnesson.

Beaten by his father when he was a child and in conflict with his mother, according to the personality survey, also addicted to cannabis, the man also questions his relationship to religion. In letters sent during his detention to the investigating judge, the man who claims to be Muslim, practicing for two years with "seven prayers a day" but who has not been reported for radicalization, wrote that the young woman had been "called to God". "By whose will was Salome recalled? By whose will did Salome lose her life? ", asked him several times the president of the Assize Court. "The facts, I recognize them and I apologize for them" but "I do not answer questions relating to religion," he replied, annoyed. The verdict is expected on Friday.

  • Justice
  • Nice
  • Alpes-Maritimes
  • PACA
  • Murder
  • Femicide
  • Society
  • Lawsuit
  • Assize Court