- Juventus held by Cagliari after late penalty drama
- In France's Marseille, teen 'stabbed 50 times' then burned alive
- Ruthless Gauff beats Muchova in straight sets to win China Open
- India restrict Pakistan to 105-8 in Women's T20 World Cup
- England target repeat of Pakistan Test whitewash
- Penrith Panthers win fourth straight NRL title after downing Storm
- Weary Sinner happy for day off after battling into Shanghai last 16
- Pakistan's Masood warns England still a force without Stokes
- Madrid's Carvajal to miss several months after serious knee injury
- Israel pounds Lebanon ahead of Hamas attack anniversary
- Two elephants die in flash flooding in northern Thailand
- Sabalenka targets world number one and Wuhan hat-trick
- Toddler among 4 dead in migrant Channel crossings
- Tunisia votes with Saied set for re-election
- Bagnaia sets 'example' with Japan MotoGP win to cut gap on Martin
- Intense Israeli bombing rocks Beirut ahead of war anniversary
- Mozambique vote: no suspense but some disillusion
- Austrian rapper channels anti-racist rage in Romani hip-hop songs
- Ohtani magic powers Dodgers over Padres in MLB playoff thriller
- Five of the best: Pakistan-England Test thrillers
- Man sets arm on fire as marches across US mark Gaza war anniversary
- Vietnam's young coffee entrepreneurs brew up a revolution
- Trump rallies at site of failed assassination: 'Never quit'
- Too hot by day, Dubai's floodlit beaches are packed at night
- Is music finally reckoning with #MeToo?
- Fans hail Trump's 'guts' as he returns to site of rally shooting
- Lebanon state media says 'very violent' Israeli strikes hit south Beirut
- Guardians maul Tigers, miracle Mets rally in MLB series openers
- Lebanon state media says Israeli strikes hit south Beirut
- Miami on track for MLS record points after win in Toronto
- Madrid beat Villarreal but Carvajal suffers knee injury
- Madrid beat Villarreal to move level with Liga leaders Barcelona
- Monaco take top spot in Ligue 1 with win at Rennes
- French rugby player on rape charge whistled but 'serene' on return
- Madrid beat Villarreal to level Liga leaders Barca
- Thuram treble fires Inter past Torino and up to second
- 'Fight': defiant Trump jets in to site of rally shooting
- Toddler among 3 dead in migrant Channel crossings
- Mexico City's new mayor sworn in with pledges on water, housing
- Israel on alert ahead of Hamas attack anniversary
- Guardians maul Tigers in MLB playoff series opener
- Macron criticises Israel on Gaza, Lebanon operations
- French rugby player whistled but 'serene' on return amid ongoing rape case
- Kovacic stars as Man City sink Fulham to get title bid back on track
- Retegui hat-trick fires five-star Atalanta to hammering of Genoa
- Heavyweights Australia, England off to World Cup winning starts
- Visiting UN refugee agency chief decries 'terrible crisis' in Lebanon
- Spinners come to party as England defeat Bangladesh at T20 World Cup
- Search continues for missing in deadly Bosnia floods
- Man City sink Fulham to get title bid back on track
French husband kept meticulous records of wife's alleged rapists, court told
A French investigator leading the probe into a man accused of recruiting dozens of strangers to rape his heavily sedated wife told a court Wednesday of painstaking efforts to identify the perpetrators via the husband's detailed records of the assaults.
Dominique P., a 71-year-old retiree, had abused his wife between 2011 and 2020, drugging her with sleeping pills and then inviting dozens of strangers to rape her.
He documented the decade-long abuse of his wife, Gisele P., with meticulous precision, allowing French police to track down 50 men suspected of raping her while she was drugged.
On the third day of the trial in the southern city of Avignon, the commissioner in charge of the inquiry said investigators sifted through numerous telephone bills, pictures and videos and used facial recognition software to identify the suspects, all of them men.
Jeremie Bosse Platiere, director of the Hautes-Alpes interdepartmental police force, said investigators had drawn up a list of 72 individuals suspected of abusing Gisele P., 72.
The investigators counted around 200 instances of rape, most of them by Dominique P., that took place between July 2011 and October 2020.
Given the sheer number of suspects, police had to carry out arrests in five waves between late 2020 and September 2021.
Only 50 suspects, aged between 26 and 74, have so far been identified and tracked down. Most of them face up to 20 years in jail for aggravated rape if convicted.
- 'Chris the fireman' -
According to the investigators, Dominique P. put together a dossier containing thousands of pictures and videos of the assaults, which were stored on a hard disk in a folder named "abuse."
The folder contained sub-folders for each man who came to rape his wife.
"A list was then drawn up for each individual according to the name of the file," said Bosse Platiere, adding that his team worked to identify men behind nicknames such as "Chris the fireman", "Quentin", "Gaston" and "David the Black".
The police have also scrutinised countless telephone exchanges and online conversations between the husband and his wife's potential attackers.
Bosse Platiere said the police worked to see if there was a link between the calls and instances of rape by looking at Dominique P.'s phone bills and the recovered images.
Dominique P. had also blocked numerous contacts on his phones, arousing the suspicion of the investigators.
"It's unusual," Bosse Platiere said, adding that it had taken them nearly two years to identify the men behind the phone numbers.
The team also used facial recognition software.
"This would enable us to identify a third of the perpetrators," he said.
The trial is due to hear from civil parties in the case on Thursday, including Gisele P. herself.
A.Malone--AMWN