El-Rufai’s son, Bello, protests yearly purchase of vehicles for Tinubu, others
Amidst economic woes, hunger and deprivation in Nigeria, the State House has allocated N15.09bn for the purchase of tyres for bulletproof vehicles, Sport Utility Vehicles, operational vehicles, and plain cars, as well as for the construction of an office complex for Special Advisers and Senior Special Assistants.
It also proposed a total sum of N5.49bn as a provision for the annual maintenance of the Presidential Villa.
This was disclosed in the 2025 Appropriation Bill released by the Budget Office of the Federation.
President Bola Tinubu presented the budget titled “Budget of Restoration: Securing Peace, Rebuilding Prosperity” to a joint session of the National Assembly on Wednesday, Dec. 18, outlining a N49.70tn spending plan.
In the appropriation bill document, the State House will spend N164m for the purchase of tyres for bulletproof vehicles, plain cars, jeeps, platform trucks, and other utility and operational vehicles.
Out of the sum, N1.1bn was earmarked for the replacement of SUV vehicles, and N3.66bn for the purchase of State House operational vehicles.
It stated that N127.86m will be spent on the procurement of SUVs for Mr President and the Vice President. This cost will be covered by the office of the president.
Also, N285m will be spent for the purchase of motor vehicles under the office of the Chief of staff to the president, while the Chief security officer to the President got an allocation of N179.63m for the purchase of security and operational vehicles.
N2.12bn was allocated for honorarium and sitting allowances and the proposed spending of N1.83bn for the construction of an office complex for Special Advisers and Senior Special advisers.
Meanwhile, Bello El-Rufai, eldest son of former Kaduna State Governor and chairman of Senate Committee on Banking, has protested the purchase of vehicles, computers, utensils and other items in every budget circle of the government.
In the N49.7 trillion budget submitted to the National Assembly by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on Wednesday, December 17, the presidency proposed the sum of N164.9 million on buying tyres for State House bullet proof vehicles, plain cars and Jeeps.
In the 2024 supplementary budget, the presidency allocated N6.9 billion for the procurement of vehicles for the State House, and N1.5 billion allocated for new cars for the Office of the First Lady.
Speaking on the recurrence of such items as cars, computers, utensils and others in every budget circle, Bello El-Rufai said it is wasteful and should be scrapped. He made the remarks during a debate on the budget in the House of Representatives.
He said: “The recurring issue in every budget is the budget for vehicles. We budget for computers every year. We budget for utensils every year. Vehicles don’t expire. These are the little things we should look at otherwise the blocking of loopholes we talked about will not come.
“Since I was a child, the budget every year has come with new computers, and new furniture. We should cut them out totally if we must block loopholes.”
Madam Olukemi Olufunto Adeleke Badenoch, who thinks of herself as British because she lives in Britain, is married to a kilt-wearing Scotsman, sits in the House of Commons, is Leader of the opposition Conservative Party and is busy rubbishing and denigrating her ancestral country in order to “belong” to the new country, could she spare a minute and learn a lesson from the Irish, many of whom are members of the party she allegedly leads? “Follows” is more like it because a leader is supposed to set the standards, rather than bend over backwards to bootlick the values of his supposed followers.
I will recommend to Kemi to read Margaret Mitchell’s all-time classic novel, Gone With The Wind. It was about the Southern American “civilization” of the mid-19th century, built around the affluence of huge cotton plantations, maintained by millions of Black slaves hauled in from across the Atlantic Ocean from West and Central Africa. This “civilization” evaporated with the American Civil War of 1861-65. The book itself was described as “the story of a civilization, a civilization gone with the wind.”
There was this interesting passage about Gerald O’Hara, father of Scarlett O’Hara, the novel’s central character. He owned the sprawling Tara cotton plantation in Georgia State, with hundreds of field and domestic slaves, of which he was very proud. One day he came galloping home on his favourite mare, only to find his beloved daughter, Scarlett sitting on the porch, heartbroken because she did not win the heart of her juvenile love, Ashley Wilkes. Mr. O’Hara was quite unhappy that any mundane thing should upset his daughter. Surveying the huge cotton fields and the extremely rich Southern American landscape which White settlers had snatched from Red Indians, he said to his daughter, “You, who is going to inherit the best land in the world!” Then he quickly added, “After County Meade, in the old country.”
Even though O’Hara himself or his ancestors fled from Ireland in order to escape a famine, and despite the splendor of his new life and his possession of the Tara plantation, he still had the presence of mind to place his ancestral home as the best land in the world. Ten years ago, when I was moving into my new house in Abuja, I surveyed the pleasant surroundings but, borrowing from Mr. O’Hara, I said, “This is the best house in the world! After Magatakarda’s house, in Jega.”
Now, County Meade, in Ireland, was the place that O’Hara fled from prior to the Great Irish Potato Famine of 1845-52, a period of mass starvation and disease that led to one million deaths, forced another one million Irishmen and women to flee to North America, and reduced the country’s population by one quarter. It was principally caused by the potato blight fungus Phytophthora infestans, which destroyed potato crops, the main food of the Irish. This fungus is here in Nigeria; I used to teach about it in Biology classes, even though it was not the immediate cause of Kemi’s flight to the UK. Luckily for the starving Irishmen, the US at the time was very welcoming of [European] immigrants in order to drive out the Red Indians and the hundreds of millions of bison and occupy their land. It even erected a statue on Liberty Island, leading into New York harbor, welcoming immigrants with the words, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Send these the homeless, tempest tossed, to me…” When President Donald Trump, who is of German ancestry, takes charge from January next year, he might pull down the Statue of Liberty and possibly throw the Irish back whence they came from.
Madam Kemi, before you embarked on a serial denigration of your ancestral homeland in order to “belong” to the new home, did you sit down to reflect why the Tories, who were thrown out of power in British general elections last July, decided to make you, of all people, to be their old party’s leader? This young, black, first-generation immigrant, inexperienced, talk-before-you think gate crasher into Conservative values, asked to occupy the chair on which Benjamin Disraeli, Arthur Balfour, Winston Churchill, Anthony Eden, Harold McMillan, Alec Douglas-Home, Edward Heath, Margaret Thatcher, John Major, David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson and more recently, Rishi Sunak once sat, with nothing of the charisma or the self-esteem?
Kemi Badenoch’s absolute fascination with the House that the British Built on their small island is understandable, but that is because she has no knowledge at all of the very heavy price that others paid in order for the Brits to build this island. At one time Britain had one quarter of the entire human population under its imperial boot. Hundreds of thousands of ships ferried riches “more than the mind can picture,” to borrow from Old Major’s song in Animal Farm, to Britain from all the countries of the far-flung empire, including Africa, Caribbeans, South America, Asia, Arabia, West Indies and the Pacific Islands. Even IBM computers cannot quantify the wealth that left colonial India, the so-called “Crown Jewel of the British Empire,” and landed on British shores.
Why are so many people around the world not as fascinated as Madam Kemi is with the British homeland? The American Red Indians, Australian Aboriginals, tens of millions of African slaves that were shipped to work in slave plantations, the Kenyans who suffered under the colonial State of Emergency in order to suppress the Mau Mau; the Southern Rhodesians who suffered under Ian Smith’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence [UDI] with British connivance; not to mention South African blacks, who endured five decades of Apartheid rule and centuries of racial discrimination, all do not have Madam Kemi’s fascination with the British Isles.
My recently deceased Mum once told me a story, that during the Second World War in the 1940s, many young men in the village where she grew up were drafted into the colonial British Army and sent off to fight the Japanese in Burma. Many of them never returned. In addition, Native Authority officials went round all the villages, urging farmers to donate groundnuts and other cash crops to assist the British war effort. Hundreds of thousands of tones from our back-breaking labour went to assist in a fight that did not really concern us. Since we have helped the British to escape the clutches of Adolf Hitler, they should please refund to us the cost of our groundnuts and other produce, instead of granting safe haven to our own misguided daughter to insult us from afar. When Northern Nigeria was donating groundnuts to help save the Brits from Hitler, why didn’t they reject it and say it was from Boko Haram territory? Are they sure that it is not the farm produce they looted from our lands that set the stage for Boko Haram and bandits to roam over this place?
Mrs. Badenoch is so grateful because she has risen to a position in an opposition political party, and she feels on top of the world. Is she the first person from the Third World, from Africa or even from Nigeria that ever rose to an exalted position on the world, not just a British, stage? During our early primary school days, we endlessly heard the name of U Thant in the BBC World News, because of the then raging Vietnam War. We got the impression in our young minds that he was the ruler of the world. I later came to realise that this Burmese diplomat was Secretary General of the United Nations. His home country Burma, then under Ne Win, subsequently under the Senior General Shan Shwe and even today under General Min Aung Hlaing, is not the most pleasant of countries but U Thant, prominent that he was, never disowned Burma or said he belonged to Bamar ethnic group, or that he had nothing in common with the Rohingyas of western Burma, most of whom are in exile today in Bangladesh.
The other sons and daughters of the Third World who rose to prominence on the world stage, did they ever denigrate their homelands? When Boutros Boutros-Ghali became Secretary General of the United Nations, did he ever disown Egypt because Muslim Brotherhood militants sometimes exploded bombs in the Sinai? Did Kofi Anan ever disown Ghana because he served a long tenure as UN Secretary General? Did Javier Perez De Cuellar ever lampoon Peru? What about Ban Ki-moon; did he disown his native South Korea for fear that North Korea may one day send a million troops across the DMZ?
Other Nigerians who rose to prominence on the international stage, Adebayo Adedeji as Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa; Emeka Anyaoku as Secretary General of Commonwealth of Nations; Akinwunmi Adesina who is President of the Africa Development Bank; Tijjani Mohamed-Bande who was President of the UN General Assembly; Amina Mohamed who is Deputy Secerary General of the United Nations and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala who is Director General of the World Trade Organisation, positions all more exalted than Madam Kemi’s, which one of them lampooned Nigeria in order to “belong” to his/her new circle?
Madam Kemi said she is Yoruba and has nothing in common with Northern Nigeria, the home of Boko Haram. How come she forgot that when she returned to Britain in 1996, “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland had raged for 28 years and bombs planted by the Provisional Irish Republican Army [IRA] were exploding in British city street corners?
What is Leader of a British opposition party when the son of an African, Barack Obama, rose to become President of the United States? Even though his mother was a lily-White woman from Kansas, did Obama ever disown Kenya, from where his father went to the US as a student? He must have learnt something from his father, who returned home after his studies and did not elope, despite marrying a White woman. Rather than disown his ancestry, President Obama actually flaunted it. In his first week in the White House, he introduced to reporters a pet dog that he just procured. The puppy was mixed breed, so Obama said, “It is a mutt, like me.”
Not only them. When Iosif Vissarionovich Djugashvili, alias Stalin, was General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party and leader of the Soviet Union from 1924 to 1953, did he ever disown his tiny native Georgia in order to ingratiate himself with Russia, the dominant partner in the Soviet Union? When Josif Broz Tito, who was half Croat and half Slovene, became President of Yugoslavia, did he ever disown his homeland in order to gain acceptance from Serbs, who dominated the country?
Look, when Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933 and later rose to become Der Fuehrer, he wasn’t even a German but an Austrian, son of the small Austrian Customs officer Alois Schicklgruber. Did he ever deny Austria in order gain acceptance from aristocratic Prussian Generals and Junkers?
In an attempt to justify the conviction and death sentence passed on Olowokere Segun by the Osun State High Court, the learned trial judge, Falola J. has said that it was a case of armed robbery and not a theft of fowl as widely reported in the social media. The judge pointed out that the convict was found guilty of armed robbery and sentenced to death. However, on the grounds of the young age of the convict and the circumstances of the case, the judge had recommended to the Governor to commute the death penalty to life imprisonment.
We submit that the trial, conviction, and death sentence passed on Olowokere Segun were illegal, null and void in every material particular. Since it was not denied that Olowokere was 17 years old at the time of his trial, the Osun State High Court lacked the jurisdictional competence to have tried him. The case ought to have been instituted in the Osun State Family Court which is exclusively empowered to exercise jurisdiction in any criminal proceeding involving or relating to any penalty, forfeiture, punishment or other liability in respect of an offence committed by a child, against a child or against the interest of a child.
Even before the enactment of the Child’s Rights Law, it was illegal to pass the death sentence on a 17-year old person under section 420 of the Osun State Criminal Procedure Law. It was in realisation of the provision of that law that the learned trial judge recommended to the Governor of Osun State to grant clemency to Olowokere Segun based on mitigating factors, such as age and first-offender status.
But probably due to poverty and ignorance, the family of Olowokere neither appealed against the judgment nor pursued the recommendation of clemency made by the trial judge. Hence, the young convict had been on death row at the Kirikiri Maximum Correctional Centre for the past 10 years.
Since the trial, conviction and death sentence passed on Olowokere Segun cannot be justified in law, Governor Ademola Adeleke has rightly granted him full pardon in exercise of the prerogative of mercy conferred on him by section 214 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
The case of Olowokere Segun is a sad reminder of the case of the 12 young persons who were convicted and sentenced to death for armed robbery in Lagos in 1989. The judgment was full of errors of mistrial. In particular, the convicts were below the age of 16 years and did not speak a common language. In fact, the charge of conspiracy to commit robbery was not proved as the convicts could only express themselves in Hausa, Yoruba and Ewe languages.
Curiously, the tribunal ordered the deportation of two Ghanaians among the convicts, thereby sparing their lives. Even though the Armed Robbery and Firearms Decree ousted the jurisdiction of the courts, we challenged the human right of the convicted Nigerians to freedom from discrimination under Article 2 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights (Ratification and Enforcement) Act.
The Lagos State High Court granted our application for injunction restraining the Lagos State military Governor from executing the convicts pending the determination of the substantive application. Before the substantive case was heard, the military junta had relinquished power. Based on the representation made on behalf of the convicts by our law firm, Governor Michael Otedola committed their death sentences to 10 years imprisonment. A few months later, the Governor granted them full pardon on account of their good behaviour.
Happily, Governor Otedola ensured that the ex-convicts were rehabilitated upon their release from prison custody. While appreciating the decision of Governor Adeleke to grant pardon to Olowokere Segun, we are compelled to call on the the Osun State Government to facilitate his full integration to the society.
Chidi Odinkalu teaches international law for the real world
As a third-generation educator, Chidi Odinkalu always thought that teaching was a vehicle for public service. In his position as professor of the practice of international human rights law at The Fletcher School, he marries his work in the classroom with human rights advocacy around the world.
Growing up amidst Nigeria’s Civil War, Odinkalu recognized that the country was undergoing a humanitarian crisis within the greater authoritarian crisis. Starvation became an instrument of war, and over 3 million people were killed within 30 months.
“I was born into internal displacement inside the war, and that, in many ways, defined my trajectory,” said Odinkalu.
This trajectory has situated him as an important decision maker and advocate for various conflicts around the continent. Today, he focuses his work on transitional justice, regional courts and tribunals in Africa, statelessness, and accountability for mass atrocities.
“I think the lifeblood of an intellectual is not just writing articles,” said Odinkalu. “It is actually being able to take on the big challenges in the fields that you profess to have expertise in. It’s necessary to intersect the world of thinking and writing with a world of trying to test some of the propositions that we make.”
Real-World Faculty, Real-World Practitioner
For Odinkalu, this imperative has meant supporting efforts to improve the protection of human rights and the institutions of human rights and justice throughout Africa. When he was beginning his career in international law, he was involved in negotiating the treaty that led to the creation of the African Court on Human and People’s Rights.
One of the first cases to come before the court regarded the political assassination of the leading independent journalist in Burkina Faso, Norbert Zongo. Odinkalu represented Zongo’s widow, and the case both awarded her substantial reparations and settled some principles on the human rights of journalists. Since then, he has seen the need for the African regional human rights system to evolve to address human rights atrocities and enforce international criminal law.
From 2004 to 2014, the African continent negotiated adaptations to the African regional human rights court, effectively giving criminal jurisdiction to the African Court on Human and People’s Rights. Odinkalu has taken on the task of bringing the court into existence, work he says is keeping him awake at night. To do so requires 15 ratifications; he and his team have secured the first ratification from Angola and are in the process of negotiating more.
Additionally, he devotes much of his energy to supporting transitional justice in Nigeria.
“Thousands of people are killed every year as a result of violence,” said Odinkalu. “Part of that violence is also a historical legacy of the Nigerian Civil War.”
To find a way forward for the country that confronts the damage and violence wrought by the war, Odinkalu is chairing a university council to determine whether and how it may be possible to address the legacy of violence on a sustainable basis, bring it to an end, and make life easier for people living there.
“We’re trying to implement a mechanism of memorialization of that legacy of conflict,” he said. “One of the problems we have found is that there was a concerted effort by the Nigerian government at the end of the civil war to criminalize acknowledgement of the trauma from that violence.”
“You cannot deny historical trauma. Historical narrative is central to trying to heal and emerge from a violent episode. This is where universities, academics, and researchers come in – making sure that that body of narrative and the evidence that supports it is preserved, accessed, and mined for precisely the kinds of things you need to help people and communities repair.”
A Critical Look at Leisure
In addition to his roles across the globe, Odinkalu finds tremendous value in his work teaching Fletcher students.
“It’s really a privilege to work with younger people and the diversity of the Fletcher campus. We’ve got a mini United Nations masquerading as a university, and it’s a privilege to live in it,” he said.
Just as he celebrates the diversity of the Fletcher community, he understands that for many students who come to campus from around the world, finding their footing can initially be intimidating.
“In my view, the first thing an instructor has to do is help the students fit in and believe in themselves,” he said.
Odinkalu sees that the classroom is a place for mutual exchange and respect, and faculty at the graduate level should foster deep, intellectual dialogue with the community, both in the classroom and out. Participating in campus life and activities, Odinkalu finds places where students exhibit leadership and their own expertise, which allows him to draw upon them as teaching resources in the classroom, in turn.
He leads classes that are dynamic and responsive to student interest. Noting that his International Human Rights Law course can focus on such topics as torture, euthanasia, and the death penalty, he insists on teaching a class on leisure and rest as well.
“How does it impact people differently depending on status, on gender, on sex, on sexuality?” he said. “Most students never knew that leisure and rest were human rights. As you unfold the dimensions – on sexuality, on sex, on status – people begin to tell you their experiences.”
“All you need to do is deploy the tools that are available to unlock the capabilities of your students and their voices,” he added.
A Pedagogy of Mutual Respect
Odinkalu is a widely beloved figure around campus, and the impact of his teaching upon his students is profound.
“Chidi Odinkalu is one of the most inspirational educators and leaders I have met during my time at Fletcher,” said Neeraja Kulkarni F23, who took his Law and Development course. “Chidi’s comprehensive knowledge of the political economy of development and the rule of law, or the lack thereof, across the Global South, is always accompanied and strengthened by a critique of development in the post-World War II era.”
“To date, Chidi remains a mentor who empowers me to ask questions that are difficult to answer, but those that we should not be silent about,” she added.
Reflecting upon the relationship of mutual exchange and learning he fosters with his students, Odinkalu said, “It’s about more than just giving students content. In my view, the biggest thing an instructor does in grad school is to give the students confidence in themselves, their voices, and their judgment. That involves a pedagogy that builds trust and trusts the students as resources and assets in the class.”
A boy who scored 304 in the last Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) examinations conducted by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has gone on X to lament after he was denied admission.
The boy said he took the university entrance exam in 2022 and scored 284, a high score that gets people into the medicine and surgery department, yet he did not get admission.
The teenager who is hoping to be a doctor missed the chance to take the exam in 2023 because he was still waiting for admission.
This year, 2024, he took it again and scored 304, an improvement on his initial JAMB score which was already high.
Notwithstanding his impressive result, however, he was again denied admission this year.
Bemoaning his fate on X, he wrote: “Wait what? 1yr of sleepless nights in vain? Tell me it’s a dream.”
He added: “First JAMB, 2022- Was denied admission.
“Missed 2023 registration while waiting for admission.
“Spent another 1yr home reading.
“2024- Had 304. No admission again.
“My dream to become a doctor in the mud.
“God knows I fought a good fight, will have to move on w/out school.”
“Don’t know who or what to blame… Gotta accept my defeat!” he concluded.
X users are now encouraging him not to give up.
His tweet has sparked a conversation about admissions to Nigerian universities and how people with lower scores get admission while those with higher scores are denied admission because they know no one to help them.
It is a troubling time for institutions when their mandate is compromised, privatised or personalised. The more common means of dominating an institution is making it captive of an ideology. This is often the reason why organisations divert from the heart of their constitutions. For instance, in recognition of Nigeria’s multi religious character, the Nigerian Constitution prohibits adoption of any religion as State religion. Yet, Nigeria is forcibly a member of Organisation of Islamic Cooperation.
In mid November 2024, Nigeria participated at the Arab – Islamic summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, at the highest levels, even as Nigeria’s non Arab and non Islamic identity conspicuously stood out. Corruption of Nigeria’s university system is proceeding at fast speed because of misdirected anger over poor pay, this, arising from comparison with emoluments of national assembly members. Even academics scandalised by the commercialised processes of university education today are resigned to the inbuilt extortion of students by lecturers. This false order thrives because a rationalisation psyche is in force in the universities. The United Nations too is at such a crossroads today. Founded to promote the cause of world peace, the UN is today increasingly employed to prosecute ideologies of discrimination and domination.
The UN body under threat of derailing from the organisation’s core mandate is the General Assembly. To be sure, the Security Council is privatised; but it was unapologetically framed as such from the beginning. The concept of veto power is nothing but politics of might is right. But the General Assembly was conceived under the principle of equality of nations. It was created to reflect the nuances of global diversity. By this means, it offers a voice to the voiceless in the global stage. The official UN site www.un.org points out that the GA is the “only UN body with universal representation.” But even this level mechanism can be upset, shifted; and has been manipulated against the State of Israel. In it’s subtle persecution of Israel, the GA presents an example of how democracy, an otherwise healthy system can be a disadvantage in equitable decision – making.
By it’s 193 membership strength, you would expect a wide, multi and diverse range of subjects to be receiving the GA’s attention. And for broad, dispassionate perspectives to be injected into the consideration of these felt concerns from around the world. But, no, the GA is gradually being reduced to a tribunal interrogating petitions against Israel’s right to exist. Israel’s enemies have since perfected a plot for repetitive accusations against Israel. These similar allegations are lodged with the GA on a somewhat rotatory manner so that the subject of Israel’s atrocities is regularly a talking point at the UN. With so much vehemence and theatrics thrown into it, the setting is created for sentiments to influence deliberations on the complaints.
The siege is escalated by the trick of mass numbers ranged against Israel under umbrella identities in what should be disputes between Israel and a specific member state or observer as in the case of Palestine. Whatever space left for objective examination of the issues is further assailed by the noise effect of unceasing petitions. This harangue of Israel at the UN has gone on for too long, and aside the injustice against Israel, it comes at the cost of neglect of other world conflicts.
UN Watch Database of November 3, 2024 records that “from 2015 through 2023, the UNGA has adopted 154 resolutions against Israel and 71 against other countries.” The analysis further shows that in 2024 alone, the UNGA passed 17 resolutions on Israel and only 6 resolutions on the rest of the world. Obviously taking a cue from the UNGA, the UN Human Rights Council has also proved it’s own obsession with Israel. UN Watch Database highlights that “from 2006 through 2024, the Council adopted 108 resolutions against Israel, 45 against Syria, 15 against Iran, 10 against Russia and 4 against Venezuela.”
The preponderance of these sessions on Israel is brought about by ideological influence on the question of the Jewish State. This reconceptualisation, as earlier hinted, leads to externalisation of the inherent issues. Consequently, the Israel – Palestine issue changes to Israel, Arab – Islamic conflict, which configuration automatically puts Israel at huge numerical disadvantage.
And so, the Middle East crisis is probably more of ideological tussle than it is about land. It’s precisely the contrasting values between Judeo – Christian civilisation and Arab – Islamic heritage that pits a swarm of countries against Israel. This is why Iran, a non Arab State with theocratic rulership, is a ringleader of the plot against Israel. It also explains why almost every Arab – Islamic summit is preoccupied with the Israel agenda. Aside the emotional drive that goes with religion, the anti Israel axis also brings economic pressure to bear on it’s campaign. Between them, the Arab – Islamic solidarity controls no less than seventy percent of the world’s oil resources.
This natural endowment was weaponised against Israel and the United States following the 1973 Yom Kippur war. The impact of the oil sanctions gave rise to the American energy crisis. The economic leverage through oil boycott continues to be used to enlist otherwise unwilling countries into opposition against Israel. Then, there is the awful approach of inciting resentment against Israel with propaganda and disinformation.
We see this tactics actively at play in the Gaza war. While we acknowledge Israel’s excesses in the war, the attempt to condition minds against Israel should be deplored. A few observers have wondered at the ease with which even sections of the Western media lapped up Hamas’ narrative of the war, including dizzying casualty figures and the catchphrase of seventy percent of the victims being women and children.
Do mainstream, independent media really doubt that terrorist armies such as Hamas violates international law by infiltrating civilian infrastructure and exploiting non combatants as human shield? In an article in The Telegraph of 16 December, 2024, Zoe Strimpel highlighted how a study by Andrew Fox, a disinformation researcher and former lecturer at Sandhurst, tore to shreds, Hamas’s casualty figures. Using their very own data for investigation, Fox provides insight into the propaganda of mainly civilian victims. “One way they did this was to list men as women. Adults were also registered as children; twenty – somethings as infants. Natural deaths, in the tens of thousands, were included as well. And the nub of it: the lion’s share of deaths in Gaza were those of fighting aged men.”
Aljazeera, the leading megaphone of the conspiracy against Israel, has been unrelenting in it’s one sided coverage of stories involving Israel. The television station which prides itself in the editorial policy of consistent reference to Arab land seized by Israel as “occupied territory”, finds justification in the provision that “international law prohibits the acquisition of land by force.” The same Aljazeera and their collaborators will say nothing about the UN charter which states: “All members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security are not endangered.” And Aljazeera will not update it’s viewers that the “occupied lands” were lost in defeated acts of aggression against Israel.
The first territories were captured in the post independence war of 1948/1949 in which Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Egypt sought to cripple the State of Israel at birth. More territories were captured in the 1956, 1967 and 1973 wars against the combined militaries of Syria, Egypt and Jordan. These violations of the UN charter mean nothing to Israel’s detractors; their concern being to extract reward for aggression. And why, does Aljazeera not rail at Turkey over it’s occupation of northern Cyprus? Why is Turkey’s defiance of Security Council Resolutions 541 and 550 acceptable to the enforcers of UN declarations?
The hostility and assault against the State of Israel and the Jewish people has not abated. If anything, it has intensified in the past half a century. In the wake of the Gaza war, Israel has faced the unenviable task of fighting on seven fronts against an amalgam of three States and four terrorist militias. What else does Iran’s sectarian dictatorship do except to howl and plot for Israel’s destruction? On the existential threat faced by Israel, Wikipedia tells us: “There have been explicit or implicit expressions, statements and rhetoric made by individuals, political entities and factions within Arab and Islamic discourse advocating for the elimination of the State of Israel as a political entity. These calls often involve the use of strong language, genocidal threats or declarations aiming at the complete eradication of Israel.”
And yet, it’s this same Israel which ought to receive UN special protection in this climate of identity hysteria that is persistently bullied at the UN!
There seems no doubt anymore that Antonio Guterres, the current UN Secretary General has capitulated to the phalanx of anti Israel mob at the UN. A measure of the UN’s wretched position on the Gaza conflict is to always demand for a ceasefire before calling for release of Israeli hostages.This miserable shying away from unconditional condemnation and reversal of lingering incidents of the October 7, 2023 massacre is a betrayal to the very essence of the world body. We are dealing with a leadership of the UN susceptible to selective history of the Middle East crisis.
In his first reaction to Hamas’s murder spree of October 7, Gutteres had in the same breath of condemning the killings, said the massacre did not occur in a vacuum! Gutteres clearly needs help. With this mindset, he renders himself unfit to drive a resolution process on the subject. With antagonistic fixation on Israel, Gutteres leadership does not seem to have found the time nor sensitivity to address other grave issues demanding urgent action from the UN. Over – concentrated on Israel, the UN watched as Russia annexed Ukrainian Crimea before declaring full war against Ukraine.
The bombardment of Ukrainian cities has continued, with energy infrastructure and other critical supplies the targets of overwhelming firepower. But a partisan UN knows when to look the other way. Iran, Iraq and Turkey jostle to outdo the other in their brutal suppression of Kurdish minorities in their States. And a parochial UN has no problem choosing which independence struggles to disregard.
The UN’s hounding of Israel has been counterproductive. It has only served to heighten consciousness about the interests seeking to impose their worldviews on the rest of us. Israel is not about to disappear. But the UN will get weaker by pandering to divisive forces.
Madame Pelicot makes emotional statement after ex-husband was jailed alongside fellow rapists
Finally, France’s most horrific sexual abuse case has concluded after a months-long trial with 51 men brought to justice for their heinous crimes.
Dominique Pelicot, 72, now known as the Monster of Avignon, drugged, raped and organised the repeated rape and sexual abuse of his now-ex-wife Gisele Pelicot by dozens of other men.
Firefighters, soldiers, lorry drivers, a DJ and a journalist are among those found guilty of raping 71-year-old Gisele at the behest of her husband Dominique over the course of a decade – all without her knowledge.
On Thursday, Today, the Monster of Avignon was slapped with a 20-year prison term by Judge Roger Arata after he pleaded guilty to drugging her repeatedly for almost a decade to rape her and to offer up her unconscious body for sex to dozens of strangers.
Several abusers have escaped justice, with police unable to identify more than 20 men involved in Gisele’s abuse.
But Arata handed down guilty sentences to another 50 men besides Pelicot, many of whom contacted Gisele’s husband online and were invited to his home in the sleepy Provence village of Mazan to assault his unconscious wife on camera.
In all, the court found 47 of the defendants guilty of rape, two guilty of attempted rape and two guilty of sexual assault.
Chaos erupted outside the courtroom with a large group of baying protesters gathered outside shouting ‘shame on you’ as the defendants emerged, hiding their faces behind masks and under hoods.
Meanwhile, the lawyer for one defendant who was found guilty of sexual assault but walks free having already spent the length of his sentence behind bars was filmed laughing at the protesters, labelling them ‘a bunch of hysterical knitters’ and taunting them by saying ‘my client has a message for you – the message is s***’.
He went on to say: ‘Your request for 20-year prison sentences for all the defendants has been refused… My client walks free, he says ‘Up yours!’
Now, as the trial comes to a close, these are the disturbing testimonies and astonishing excuses given by the men accompanying Pelicot in court, along with their verdicts and sentences in full.
Dominique Pelicot, 72
Pelicot, who had been with Gisele for 50 years and shares three children with her, has admitted to serially raping and allowing others to abuse his wife.
‘I am a rapist just like all the others in this room,’ he said, adding: ‘I ask my wife, my children, my grandchildren to accept my apologies. I regret what I did. I ask for your forgiveness, even if it is not forgivable.’
Pelicot told the courtroom he had a difficult upbringing and had himself been a victim of rape, crying at times as he gave his testimony.
He said he had wanted his wife to participate in partner swaps and her refusal, together with trauma from his youth, had helped to trigger his abusive behaviour.
‘It became a perversion, an addiction,’ he told the courtroom.
Pelicot said he had filmed the acts of abuse as an insurance policy in case one of the men involved reacted poorly. He was on Thursday found guilty and sentenced to 20 years in jail.
The Monster of Avignon’s lawyer Beatrice Zavarro said no decision has yet been made on whether he will appeal his sentence.
She says she will not criticise any decision made by the courts, adding they now had 10 days to discuss whether to bring forward a challenge to the ruling.
Thierry Postat, 61, refrigeration specialist
The father-of-three denied raping Gisele on August 21, 2020, saying he did not see anything out of the ordinary about the night in question and had previously had encounters with couples where the man had given consent for the woman.
‘I always thought Mrs Pelicot would wake up,’ he told the court. ‘She wasn’t cold, she wasn’t dead, her skin was soft.’
The 61-year-old is also charged with possession of hundreds of child abuse images which were found after his arrest in the Pelicot case, charges he admits to.
Found guilty of aggravated rape and possessing child pornography, sentenced to 12 years in prison and banned from working with children for life.
Lionel Rodriguez, 44, supermarket worker
The father-of-three admitted that he was guilty of raping Gisele on December 2, 2018 – though he said he had not intended to.
‘Since I never obtained Gisele’s consent, I have no choice but to accept the facts,’ he told the court, before apologising to his victim for the ‘nightmare’ she had endured.
He added: ‘I never told myself: ”I will rape that woman”,’ but admitted that he should have left when he saw Gisele was unconscious, and that it was cowardly of him not to have said anything.
He put some of the blame on Pelicot, saying he had done what the husband had told him to do.
Found guilty of aggravated rape, sentenced to eight years in prison.
Gisele Pelicot gave a powerful statement after the jailing of her depraved husband and his rapist accomplices, saying she has ‘never regretted’ her decision to waive her anonymity and that she did so to reveal to the world what they had done.
Dominique Pelicot cried as he was sentenced to the maximum of 20 years in prison for raping and organising the mass rape of his wife – with all of his 50 co-defendants also receiving guilty verdicts for their part in France’s most notorious sex crimes trial.
Madame Pelicot later emerged from the courtroom to the waiting cameras of the world’s media, saying she was ’emotional’ as she issued a statement after what she said had been ‘a very difficult test for me.’
‘I am thinking first and foremost about my children, David, Caroline and Florian. I am thinking also about my grandchildren. For them I really wanted to take this struggle forward.
‘I’m thinking about all the other families affected by the case and the not recognised victims in the shadows… I share their struggle.’
She went on to share her ‘deepest gratitude’ to all those who supported her throughout the trial, describing how ‘witness statements and testimonials really gave me strength to keep coming back’ throughout the three-month ordeal.
Referring to why she waived her anonymity, she said: ‘I wanted when I started with this case on September 2 to ensure that society could see what was happening and I have never regretted this decision.
‘I want to take hold of a future in which everybody, women and men, can live together in harmony, respect and mutual understanding.’
Born on December 18, 67 years ago in Ilesha, Osun State, Chief Mrs Olufunmilayo Victoria Awomolo, SAN taught Chemistry at Queen Elizabeth School, Ilorin, for 10 years before studying Law.
Ever acknowledging the support of her husband Asiwaju Adegboyega Awomolo, SAN, she said: “Even as a pure science person, he told me that I was intelligent enough and could do it. He encouraged me and I got admission into the University of Ibadan through direct entry.
FIDA Abuja members, Mrs Omaka, Adama Mohammed, Mrs Osipitan, and Ifeoluwa Johnson celebrate with the Learned Silk
“Whenever I finished a semester, he would say one down, seven more to go. I was lucky I did not get any carryover.”
The 18th female Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) was a Regional Vice President, Africa North and West of the International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA).
Watch the celebrant’s birthday steps as captured by Adama Mohammed.
Smart, agile, combining brain with beauty, the 67-year-old celebrant who hails from Kogi State insists that every woman has worth.
The Learned Silk with zero tolerance for abuse and domestic violence warns women who choose to remain in toxic relationships because of their children to run as their children want them alive.
Chief Mrs. Victoria Awomolo, SAN
Also, Chief Mrs Awomolo maintains there is no such thing as an overnight success. For her, those who crave success must embrace diligence to refine themselves or their ability in preparation for opportunity when it knocks.
The young Funmilayo attended Salvation Army Primary School, Ilesha and later gained admission to IIesha Grammar School for her Secondary education. Thereafter proceeded to Kwara State College of Technology for her ‘A’ levels.
In 1981 she graduated from the University of Benin with a degree in Chemistry and at the University of Ibadan where she obtained an LLB in 1996, she was the best graduating student in Labour Law.
The man who has come to be known as the Monster of Avignon, for drugging his wife over a 10-year-period and arranging more than 50 men to rape her, Dominique Pelicot has been found guilty of all the charges against him in France ‘s most notorious sex crime trial.
The 72-year-old Pelicot who pleaded guilty to all the charges against him, including the aggravated rape of his wife Gisele Pelicot and the rape of the wife of one of his co-defendants, has been sentenced to 20 years in prison; with prosecutors seeking terms of between four and 18 years for the other defendants.
A panel of five judges at the criminal court in the southern French city of Avignon pronounced Pelicot guilty on Thursday of orchestrating the drugging and the raping of his wife for almost a decade, offering up her body to his 50 co-conspirators.
Almost all of the 50 co-defendants – aged between 27 and 74 – were accused of raping Gisele Pelicot. Some of the men acknowledged wrongdoing, while others said they believed she had consented to sex
In total, 51 men were sentenced to more than 400 collective years behind bars with all of Pelicot’s accomplices found guilty of sex crimes with 46 convicted of rape, two of attempted rape and two of sexual assault.
Gisele Pelicot, who is also 72, was seated on one side of the courtroom, facing the defendants as the presiding judge, Roger Arata, announced one guilty verdict after another.
Working his way through the first names on the list, Arata declared: “You are therefore declared guilty of aggravated rape on the person of Mme. Gisele Pelicot.”
Delivering the verdict, Arata said Dominique Pelicot would not be eligible for parole until he has served two thirds of his sentence.
The lawyer for Dominique Pelicot said after sentencing that her client was considering lodging an appeal. He and the other defendants have 10 days to decide on this.
A cheer went up outside the court among the victim’s supporters when news of the first guilty verdicts filtered out.
During the trial, Dominique Pelicot admitted that for years he knocked his then-wife of 50 years out with drugs so that he and strangers he recruited online could abuse her while he filmed the assaults.
He denied misleading the other defendants, saying they knew exactly what they were doing. “I am a rapist like the others in this room,” he said during testimony.
Gisele Pelicot waived her right to anonymity during the hearings and demanded that horrifying videos of the serial abuse, which were recorded by her former husband, should be seen in court.
“I’ve decided not to be ashamed, I’ve done nothing wrong,” she testified in October. “They are the ones who must be ashamed,” she said.
Pelicot has become a feminist champion in France as the historic case has profoundly shaken the country over the past several months.
“I wanted all women who are rape victims to say to themselves: ‘Mrs Pelicot did it, so we can do it too,’” she told the court in October.
She now uses her maiden name, but during the trial has asked the media to use her former name as a married woman.
The Pelicots’ children, David, Caroline and Florian, arrived in court to hear the verdict alongside their mother.
Background
For three and a half months Giselle Pelicot has attended court hearings in Avignon, France against her former husband and 50 other men accused of raping her while she was drugged unconscious. Pelicot’s insistence that the trial be made public to raise awareness of the dangers of the drug used on her and her refusal to be shamed has won her international acclaim.
Her husband orchestrating her sexual abuse by strangers could have broken her. But by standing up to her abusers in court and demanding they be ashamed, France‘s Gisele Pelicot has become a feminist champion.
Details of the unprecedented scale of Pelicot’s warped campaign to watch his wife being abused over more than a decade emerged during a trial that began in September and resumes today – a case which has horrified the world.
The trial will reach its conclusion with the dozens of men accused hearing verdicts and if they are convicted, the judge will proceed to sentence them to jail terms of between four and 18 years each, meaning they face more than 600 years in prison.
The only defendant likely to receive the maximum sentence of 20 years is Pelicot himself. He spoke publicly for the last time this morning to apologise for the betrayal of his wife.
The retired electrician praised Gisele Pelicot’s courage and appealed to her and their children for forgiveness for the terrible ordeal he had put them through by his twisted pursuit of sexual gratification.
Sitting in the dock of the Vaucluse Criminal Court, the 71-year-old, said: ‘Hello, I would like to start by saluting the courage of my ex-wife, who was forced to put up with the suggestions that she was complicit [in the rapes].
‘I ask her, the rest of the family, to please accept my apologies: I regret what I have done. I am sorry for making them suffer for over four years.
‘I am just a working man and I want to tell my family that I love them, you have the rest of my life in your hands. I ask for your forgiveness.’
The bravery of his victim wife, Madame Pelicot, in allowing her identity to be revealed around the world – and the dignity with which she conducted herself throughout the trial – has seen the case become a cause célèbre for campaigners against sexual violence.
Mme Pelicot held her head high as she heard and watched films covertly taken by her husband of 50 years in which she was abused at least 90 times by strangers he had invited into their home.
Having waived her legal right to anonymity in order to ensure the case received the maximum amount of publicity, the 72-year-old grandmother refused to be shamed – but instead repeatedly directed any shame at her abusers.
As interest in the case grew, Madame Pelicot was clapped and cheered as she arrived at court and left at the end of the day.
Graffiti honouring her bravery was daubed on Avignon’s medieval stone walls and protests in support of her erupted all over France.
Opening proceedings in the final week of this four-month trial, Judge Roger Arata told the court that all matters had now been concluded and the only procedure left was for the defendants to make their final statements.
Judge Arata declared: ‘It remains to give the floor to each of the accused. And I ask the question that applies to all of them: do you have anything to add in your defence?’
Pelicot – who is accused of drugging his wife of 50 years and inviting strangers he recruited on the internet to rape his wife – was the first to speak.
He thanked his lawyer, the court staff and his gaolers for treating him with the respect few believed he deserved.
Pelicot told the court: ‘I would like to thank the court for simple reasons: it allowed me to remain seated each time I entered the room, which was interpreted as a lack of respect during the proceedings. Which is not the case. Without protection, you die in prison.’
He continued: ‘I was saddled with names and titles when I would prefer to be forgotten.
‘I find it difficult to continue because I would like to thank the prison officers who have been humane and professional towards me. I thank you, Mr Zavarro, for your loyalty.
He concluded by claiming the ultimate punishment was the loss of his family. He said: ‘The deprivation of not seeing one’s loved ones is worse than the deprivation of freedoms.’
Pelicot was followed by the dozens of co-accused, many of whom continued to protest their innocence.
Pelicot’s accomplices packed into the courtroom in Avignon for the final week of the trial that has shone a light on France’s worst sex case in decades.
Dressed casually in jeans, hoodies, thick sweaters and t-shirts the co-defendants still at large chatted amongst each other.
Just a few feet away Madame Pelicot appeared in good spirits as she talked with her lawyer Stephane Babonneau.
Dressed in a cream coloured sweater and a beige scarf, the courageous grandmother smiled as she chatted with her defence team – and the court appointed welfare officer who has accompanied her throughout the four-month-long trial.
Madame tipped her head back as she listened to her ex-husband.
And she sat motionless as she listened to Pelicot’s accomplices beg for her forgiveness.
One defendant said: ‘If I had the opportunity for restorative justice for you I would do it willingly.’
Madame Pelicot looked ahead, refusing to lock eyes with her abusers.
One by one Pelicot’s accomplices took the microphone to offer their excuses for raping unconscious grandmother Gisele, and to ask for her forgiveness in almost equal measure.
After just over an hour, trial judge President Roger Arata, announced that he and his four assisting judges would now retire until Thursday morning when they will begin to deliver the verdicts of the accused.
Prosecutors have based their sentencing demands to the court for each defendant on aggravating factors including how many times they came to the Pelicot home and the extent of documented sexual contact.
By this assessment the worst offender, for whom prosecutors suggest an 18 year tariff, was a 63-year-old known as Romain V. He was knowingly HIV-positive yet is accused of raping Mme Pelicot on six separate occasions without wearing protection.
Because the incidents were meticulously recorded by Pelicot the defendants have been unable to deny sexual contact with the victim – but most have claimed they were unaware of the circumstances Pelicot had engineered.
French criminal law defines rape as any sexual act committed by ‘violence, coercion, threat or surprise’ but makes no reference to any need for consent – an aspect that campaigners have fixed on as outdated and wrong.
The trial heard in disturbing detail how while outwardly a doting husband, retired electrician Dominique, was secretly engineering what may possibly be the greatest marital betrayal of all time.
And as the evidence has been revealed, his 50 accomplices have wriggled and squirmed and repeatedly tried to protest their innocence.
One defendant told police; ‘rape is not possible if a woman’s husband is present’, another claimed a man; ‘can do what he likes with his wife’, while most said they believed they were taking part in a ‘kinky sex game’ in which Madame Pelicot was a willing party.
One defence lawyer, the head of the criminal bar in Avignon, Master Guillaume de Palma, even told the court rape ‘cannot occur’ if the perpetrator did not ‘mean to’. His remarks, in the second week of the trial, prompted outrage across France and added to the growing calls for justice for women.
However, the scores of videos of the unbridled truth, taken by Pelicot over ten years and shown in court to the shame-faced defendants and members of the public who queued every day to watch the real-life drama play out, left very little room for doubt.
Tossed around like a ‘rag doll’, and often snoring, Madame Pelicot, could be seen to be clearly unconscious and unable to give her consent.
In an electrifying 90-minute testimony, she told the hushed Avignon court: ‘I was sacrificed on the altar of vice.
‘My body might have been warm, but I was like a dead person. I was a dead woman, and these men take advantage of me, they defile me, they treat me like a bin bag.
‘They didn’t rape me with a gun or knife to their heads – they raped me in full consciousness. They treated me like a ragdoll. It is unbearable, and I don’t know if I will ever be able to get up [off the floor] again.’
Her abusers, most from within a 50 mile radius of the Pelicots’ home, were seemingly ordinary men from all walks of life.
The fact that broadly represented a cross section of French society saw them collectively described as Monsieur-Tout-Le-Monde – or Mr Everyman.
There was veteran chief fireman Christian Lescole, 57, who protested in court at being locked up after spending ‘a lifetime saving people’. Police also found naked pictures of children on his computer following his arrest.
Moroccan-born hospital nurse Redouan El Farihi screamed his innocence before a video of him assaulting Madame Pelicot while she lay motionless was played in court.
There was ‘sexual predator’ Jerome Vilela, a supermarket worker, who was described by his ex-partner as a ‘sex-addict’ and told a prison psychologist he saw sex as a ‘conjugal right’.
Successful builder Thierry Parisis told the court he had fallen into a spiral of depression and alcoholism following the death of his son in a car crash. He added he remembered very little about his encounter with Madame Pelicot.
Retired marine fire-fighter Jacques Cubeau said he was lonely.
There was IT worker Lionel Rodriguez, 44; painter and decorator Husamettin Dogan, 43; odd-job man Mathieu Dartus, 53; motorcycle mechanic and racer Hugues Malago, 39; and farm worker Andy Rodriguez, 37.
And there was Romain Vandevelde, a 63-year-old man with HIV who visited the Pelicots on six different occasions between December 2019 and June 2020 to rape Madame Pelicot and refused to wear a condom.
These are just a handful of the strangers that took part in the mass rape that has put the tiny village of Mazan, that lies in France’s most picturesque region, Provence, on the map.
Retired electrician Dominique Pelicot met each of his accomplices on an internet site for voyeurs called ‘a son insu’ which translates as ‘without them knowing’.
Over almost ten years he invited strangers – up to three times a week – to come to the couple’s retirement chalet to rape his wife, which he had rendered unconscious by putting powerful sedatives in her dinner and glass of rose wine.
To ensure they weren’t seen, Pelicot told the would-be rapists to park well away from the house, avoid wearing after-shave or smelling of cigarette smoke, and ensure they left nothing behind in the bedroom.
He choreographed the multiple rapes of his sleeping wife with such attention to detail that a lawyer described him in court as a ‘perverted Steven Spielberg’.
The potentially fatal doses of sedatives forced upon Madame Pelicot had a devastating effect on her health. She lost weight, her hair fell out and she suffered lengthy blackouts. Her doctor feared she was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. She also became infected with four sexually transmitted diseases. She had no idea how.
The abuse only stopped when Pelicot was arrested in October 2020 for taking pictures of women’s underwear on his phone at his local supermarket – a tacky form of voyeurism known as ‘upskirting’.
A search by gendarmes of his home discovered some 20,000 lurid images and images of his wife being violated in the marital bed on computer files and mobile phones.
The following month, while returning home from Paris where she had been looking after her grandchildren, detectives asked Madame Pelicot to come to the police station.
At first, she did not recognise the woman lying on the bed unconscious being abused in the photograph that the policeman showed her. Then she saw it was herself and that she had been used by her husband of 50 years in the depraved sex scenes he filmed.
‘That day will be seared in my memory for ever,’ Madame Pelicot told the court. ‘It was a scene of barbarism. I was in a state of shock.
‘I remember asking for a glass of water, then a psychologist came into the room, they said my husband had been detained – and everything just collapsed for me.
‘We were 50 years together, with three children and seven grandchildren, and our friends said we were the ideal couple. I just couldn’t take it in.’
Returning alone to the house where she had been so cruelly betrayed, she called her grown-up children – David, Caroline and Florian – to tell them their father was a monster.
Three days later she arrived in Paris with just two suitcases and her dog, never to return to Mazan.
Asked before the trial court how she reacted on learning how she had been abused by the father of her three children, she replied: ‘He disgusts me. I feel dirty, defiled, betrayed. It was a tsunami. I was hit by a high-speed train.’
Pelicot told investigators he carried out his warped fantasies because he was ‘bored’ and blamed his arrest for ‘disrupting his happy life’. He also hinted that he continued to hold a grudge against his long-suffering wife for a brief affair she had over 30 years ago.
The grown-up children have all disowned their father.
But courageous Gisele – whose divorce from her perverted ex-husband was confirmed in the days before the trial began in September – vowed to keep her marital name during the proceedings to protect her children and grandchildren who are also called Pelicot.
However, the family’s pain did not stop there.
During the four-year police investigation into this most cruel case of betrayal, detectives uncovered a file entitled: ‘My Daughter Naked’.
In it were photographs of Caroline Darian, as a young woman, lying asleep on a bed, dressed in lingerie and partially naked.
The pictures were taken at the family home in Villiers-sur-Marne, near Paris, before 2013 when Pelicot retired and moved to Mazan in the south of France.
Caroline Darian has written a book about the trauma she suffered after learning her father, who she had idolised, was serial sex attacker, entitled: ‘I No Longer Call You Daddy.’
At different stages of the long trial Caroline Darian confronted her father about whether he had sexually abused her – as well as her mother – storming out of court several times in distress.
But in his final statement, Pelicot admitted to the court that he was a sex addict but denied drugging his daughter Caroline and taking photographs of her semi-naked on a bed dressed in her mother’s lingerie.
Turning to his daughter, he said: ‘Caroline, I never did anything to you.’
But in a furious outburst, Caroline Darian screamed: ‘You are lying! You’re not telling half the truth, even about your ex-wife! You will die alone like a dog and caught out in lies!’
Under questioning from his lawyer, Pelicot accepted he would ‘die like a dog’ in jail for the crimes he had committed, but refused to give his beloved daughter the truth she needed.
And while France’s worst husband knows he has seen his family for the last time, he is expected to appear in court again, as Pelicot faces further allegations of rape and murder after France’s cold case bureau in Nanterre linked him with at least six hitherto unsolved crimes.
Pelicot has admitted the rape of a young estate agent in the Paris suburb of Villeparisis in 1999 but denies being involved in the murder of another estate agent Sophie Narne in another Paris in another suburb eight years earlier and other similar cases.
The Pelicot case in terms of the number of defendants is not the largest sex crime case in French history – in that regard, it is eclipsed by the child-sex rings that operated in the city of Angers in the early 2000s.
However, the globally high-profile trial has meant that it is almost certainly the most notorious.
Shamseddin Giwa, a Nigerian marriage therapist, has said that the society is set up to encourage young men to justify infidelity and bad behaviours.
The father of four also stated that many men do not truly want submissive wives. According to him, they want voiceless women who would take whatever they do and continue to stay loyal.
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