The China Mail - French ex-senator found guilty of drugging lawmaker

The high-profile trial of former senator Joel Guerriau comes months after France was stunned by a case that saw Frenchman Dominique Pelicot jailed for 20 years for repeatedly drugging his then-wife so he and dozens of strangers could rape her.

Guerriau, 68, has been on trial since Monday for allegedly using a synthetic drug known as MDMA or ecstasy to spike a glass of champagne that National Assembly MP Sandrine Josso was drinking in November 2023.

Josso said shortly after late Tuesday's verdict that it was a "huge relief". Guerriau's lawyers said he would appeal.

French prosecutors had sought a four-year prison sentence for the former senator, who described the drugging of his friend of 10 years as an accident and called himself an "idiot".

Guerriau, who has denied any sexual motivation against Josso, resigned from the upper house in October. He was expelled from the centre-right Horizons party soon after.

- 'Nightmares' -

On Monday, a visibly distressed Josso, 50, said she thought she would die after going to see Guerriau at his apartment in the French capital's chic 6th district.

She told the Paris court that she had gone to see Guerriau "with a light heart to celebrate his re-election. As the evening went on, I discovered an attacker".

She was the only guest at his Paris home that evening, and after he poured her a glass in the kitchen, she noted it tasted sweet and sticky.

"I thought maybe it was a bad champagne. Then he insisted that we toast again. I found that odd," she said in court.

Josso described soon feeling unwell with a racing heart rate, and she left hurriedly before going to hospital.

A toxicology report revealed a high dose of the drug in her blood and ecstasy was also found at Guerriau's flat.

Her lawyer, Arnaud Godefroy, said the lawmaker has struggled with the consequences of what had happened to her.

"Six months off work, physical treatment, psychological and psychiatric follow-up, nightmares, flashbacks, dissociation," said Godefroy.

Josso said she had to have four teeth removed because of the stress that caused her to grind her teeth.

- 'Idiot' -

Guerriau said he had poured the powdered ecstasy into a glass the day prior to their celebration to help calm a panic attack, but then decided against taking it, placing the glass back in the cupboard.

"In short, I am an idiot," he concluded.

Earlier Tuesday, prosecutor Benjamin Coulon argued that Guerriau "deliberately placed" MDMA in Josso's champagne and requested a five-year ban from public office.

He also demanded that the former senator be placed on the sex offenders' register, in addition to the jail term.

Guerriau, who served as a senator from 2011 to 2025, had voted for the law creating the offence of administering a harmful substance with intent to commit rape or sexual assault, Coulon said.

The prosecutor stressed that, as an elected official, Guerriau was duty-bound to "set an example".

But he also said that Guerriau had no criminal record and had "devoted part of his life to the functioning of French democracy".

The centrist politician "did not act on his intentions, it is true, no gestures were made towards Ms Josso, but he did administer drugs to her with the aim of raping her", argued Coulon.

If he drugged her, he said ironically, was it "to steal her wallet?"

One of the politician's lawyers, Henri Carpentier, said that as soon as the case came to light, "the emotion was unanimous, the disgust legitimate".

"Emotion is a bad adviser, it erases all nuance," he warned.

France last year adopted the principle of consent into the definition of the crime of rape, following other European countries like the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden.

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C.Fong--ThChM