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Moroccan Released in France After "Racist" Case
PARIS, June 25 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A French review board agreed Monday to submit to a new court the case of a Moroccan Muslim gardener who contests his conviction for the murder of his 65 year-old employer in a case that has drawn criticism of French racism against the country's Muslim population.
Omar Raddad, 38, was sentenced to 18 years in jail for his alleged killing Ghislaine Marchal in 1991 at her house in southern France, with the key piece of proof a wrongly spelt message scrawled in her blood on the wall, reading "Omar killed me."
The message, however, contained a grammatical error, which the defense said an educated woman would not have made: they charged instead that the case was motivated by racism.
Scientific evidence also made available since the 1994 trial cast doubt over the theory -- originally taken as certain -- that the author of the message was Marchal, while DNA tests showed traces of another male on the scene.
In agreeing to send his case to the Revisory Court, the review board decided that new elements of sufficient weight had been adduced to throw into question the original conviction. The court has the power to order a re-trial.
Raddad, who is fighting to clear his name and who now works as a butcher in Marseille, had his sentence partially commuted by President Jacques Chirac in 1996 and was freed in September 1998.
The move follows pressure civil rights groups, Western news agencies said. Raddad's indictment in the murder of his boss was disputed by several intellectual and judiciary circles in France who criticized the lack of evidence. His lawyer, Jacques Verges, often decried racist motivations behind his indictment.
French officials say the presidential pardon reducing Raddad's sentence does not address the question of guilt or innocence. Raddad's lawyer said he would now fight to have the guilty verdict overturned.
Muslims in France have been struggling for more rights and acknowledgement of Islam. French Muslims make up the single largest Muslim community in Europe. Their number is now estimated at around 6 million, or up to 10 percent of the total French population.
Muslims are second in size only to the Roman Catholic community.
The Muslim labor force and Muslim businessmen constitute significant economic power in the country, about 60% of them hold French nationality. Statistics show that Islam is the fastest-growing religion in France; some 50,000 Frenchmen and women are said to be converting annually.
In spite of their size, Muslims complain that the French refuse to accept the Muslim presence, considering Islam an alien force which "should be eliminated." French Muslim groups say that their communities are being overwhelmed by the "secularism" sweeping over all spheres of life in France, where it is increasingly difficult to live or bring up children as Muslims.
Last week, a French court has rejected a Turkish Muslim woman's demand for a resident's permit on the grounds that she wore a headscarf for her identity photograph.
In its ruling, the appeals court in the eastern city of Nancy, dismissed government legal advice that the woman should be allowed to wear a headscarf in her ID photo as long as it did not disguise her identity.
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