Global News Podcast - Guilty verdicts and jail sentences in France's biggest rape trial

Episode Date: December 19, 2024

In a major trial in France, Dominique Pelicot and 50 pther men are jailed for repeatedly raping his wife Gisèle. Also, Israeli jets attack Houthi targets in Yemen, and Czech experts restore damaged Ukrainian artworks.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Available now on the documentary from the BBC World Service. Why are people who fled the atrocities of Bosnia's war still living as refugees 30 years later? We hear from survivors of the Srebrenica massacre who have spent three decades exiled within their own country. Wherever you go, you're not welcome. Srebrenica's forgotten refugees. Listen now by searching for the documentary wherever

you get your BBC podcasts. This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Janet Jalil and at 14 Hours GMT on Thursday 19 December these are our main stories. At a mass rape trial that has horrified France, Giselle Pellico's ex-husband and 50 other men are found guilty and given jail terms. President Macron reassures the people of the French territory of Mayotte that they will get all the help they need as they struggle to recover from a devastating cyclone. Israeli fighter jets carry out airstrikes in Yemen against facilities used by Iranian-backed Houthi forces. Also in this podcast, what are toothy toadstools or ghost palms. Find out later.

It's the rape trial that shocked the world and today in France, verdicts were handed down to the 51 men accused of raping or sexually assaulting one woman. Giselle Pelico, who for almost a decade was drugged by her now ex-husband Dominique so that he and dozens of other men he recruited online could use her unconscious body to fulfil their depraved sexual fantasies. Dominique Pelico was given the maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. The other men were given sentences ranging from 3 to 15 years. The case has also made 72-year-old Giselle Pellico a feminist icon. She made the brave decision to waive her right to be anonymous,

saying the shame should be on her rapists, not her. As she made her way to the court in Avignon in southern France today, people shouted thanks and encouragement to her. After the verdicts and the sentencing, Gisèle thanked her supporters, saying she never regretted making the trial public. I wanted to open the doors of this trial last September so that society could see what was happening. I've never regretted this decision. I have confidence now in our capacity collectively to find a better future in which men and women alike can live harmoniously together with respect and mutual understanding.

We heard more from our correspondent Andrew Harding who was at the court in Avignon. It was so quick. We were expecting it to take several hours but the judge president was averaging about 20 seconds per accused as he rattled through the guilty verdicts. The guilt was not really a surprise given those extraordinary videos. What people were waiting for though was the verdicts and those followed very quickly after and with the same pattern and speed and generally the feeling was that apart from Dominique Pellico who'd got the maximum that the others had got slightly less than the prosecution had asked in most cases but

outside the courtroom in the kind of melee that followed as everyone was waiting for Giselle Pellico to speak, various defence lawyers gave various reactions. Some were quite glad that the sentences were left, others were talking about appealing, and there was still some frustration with the fact that this was a mass trial, that their clients weren't individually put on trial, and perhaps there would have been more focus, more attention to those individuals. There was a feeling that the whole process had been sort of steamrolled through the justice system. I mean, Andrew, we should probably take a step back just to go back to how this all came out because, I mean, it does seem extraordinary but originally

he was only caught because of something else. Exactly. Back in 2020 in September then he was in a supermarket in a nearby town called Carpentrain and he was filming up women's skirts. He was caught, confronted and the women who'd been assaulted essentially complained to the police. He was arrested and things could have probably ended there. In fact Giselle Pellico once told her husband, look, get some help but I forgive you, we'll work through this. But then the police decided, partly on the advice of a psychiatrist who talked to Pellico

and said, there's something more going on here. They went and investigated his phone and took laptops and hard drives from the Pellico's little bungalow cottage on the edge of a village called Mazan. And that's where they came across, out of the blue, this extraordinary cache of more from the Pelico's little bungalow cottage on the edge of a village called Mazan. And that's where they came across, out of the blue, this extraordinary cache of more than 20,000 explicit videos and photographs. And the way he recruited, invited men into his home. Can you just talk us through that as well?

For a lot of the accused, they answered a website that was very explicitly talking about a woman who was unconscious or was going to be raped or abused without her knowledge. That was explicit and Dominique Pellico said in court, these men all knew exactly what was going on. Some of the men, in fact quite a lot of the men, argued in court, look, we'd go on this website, we would meet other couples and indulge in their sexual fantasies, in threesomes, in swinging scenes. And so when Dominique Pellico said his wife was consenting, they assumed that that was the case. They insisted that they had no reason to suspect otherwise, that Dominique Pellicoe had said, in the morning my wife and I watched these videos together. This is our fantasy. But of course, the reality of those actual videos, when they were shown in court, was so profound, and it was so clear that Giselle Pellicoe was simply in no position

to have consented, because she was seen and heard snoring. She was completely unconscious. And that was the point where I think a lot of these men began to understand really what they were dealing with in terms of consent. And I think for quite a few of the men it was an education to realise what consent means. Beyond this case, he is, I understand it, the main suspect in other cases. Is that now the case? Will they be pursued? Exactly, yes. I mean, the thing with Dominique Pellico is he has denied everything until the moment it is proved beyond all doubt. When he's confronted with the video or confronted

with the 1999 DNA evidence that he had attempted to rape a woman in Paris, and he admitted to that finally. There's another case back in 1990 where a woman was raped and murdered in almost identical circumstances to the 1999 murder so that's being investigated. There are of course the abuses that we've heard about today about his daughter, a daughter-in-law and possibly even some grandchildren. So this is a man who did not start his retirement and think I'm going to become a rapist. This is a man who clearly in the decades before was up to no good.

Andrew Harding speaking there to Sarah Montague. Days after a devastating cyclone hit the French territory of Mayotte, the French president Emmanuel Macron has arrived on the Indian Ocean Archipelago. Mayotte's prefect has warned that the death toll could rise to the thousands. Mr Macron met staff at Mayotte's main hospital and said the situation there was an exceptional natural disaster. This woman is telling Mr Macron, this is the same devastation everywhere. I hear you, replies Mr. Macron.

Everyone here is mobilised and wants to do the utmost. Rouhaina Khamidine is a young woman living in the east of Mayotte. She travelled to the capital, Mamoudou, to send this message on Wednesday evening. Here in Mayotte, everything is devastated. Landscapes, houses, trees, everything is destroyed, very strong winds that blew away everything. We have no service in some parts of the island, we have no running water, we have no electricity, even the hospital has lost part of the roof so it has become very difficult to welcome patients and to really care for everybody. Our correspondent Mayeni Jones sent this report from Mayotte.

Landing in Mayotte it's immediately apparent just how complete the devastation here has been. The landscape has been completely torn off, trees lying on their sides, barren leaves, buildings have had their roofs torn off, bits of glass on the floor, and just as we landed there was a giant downpour and even in this hotel behind me, which is one of the best hotels on the island, water immediately started pouring in and people are now trying to sweep it out. It just gives you a sense of the difficulty of the conditions that people have been living here for the last few days.

The president, he says he wants to show solidarity to the people of Maillot. He'll make sure they have everything that they need. But lots of people are still waiting for food and water. We saw a picture of donations that some people got yesterday, private donations. All they had were a couple of bottles of water and a couple of tins of food. So a lot more is needed here and it's not clear exactly how long it will take to rebuild this island which has been completely devastated by Cyclone Chido. My only Jones. To the Middle East now and Israel says its fighter jets launched a series of

attacks against military targets in Yemen belonging to the Iranian Bat Houthi movement. The strikes came less than two hours after a rocket fired from Yemen triggered warning sirens across central Israel. It was successfully intercepted. The Israeli military spokesman, Daniel Higary, said the targets were facilities used by Houthi forces for their military operations.

The IDF conducted precise strikes on Houthi military targets in Yemen, including ports and energy infrastructures in Sana'a, which the Houthis have been using in ways that effectively contributed to their military actions. Israel will not hesitate to act in order to defend itself and its citizens from the Houthis' attacks. Amid Lees correspondent Yair Landanel is in Jerusalem and told us more. We believe this is only the third time that Israel has carried out direct strikes on Yemen in the past 40 months. This is the period, of course, where the Houthis in Yemen say they have been attacking Israel

and international shipping as well out of solidarity with the Palestinians. We've just had a briefing from the Israeli military who have confirmed that actually their warplanes were already in the air when a missile was fired overnight from Yemen towards the sort of Tel Aviv area of Israel. It was intercepted, although there was a lot of damage caused to a school. They say they're looking into that, it seems to be shrapnel. But inside Yemen itself, you know, it's really been shaken Sana'a, the capital. There are three ports that have been hit and the Israeli military suggesting that they have paralysed those in effect. And there've

also been power plants that have been hit. So we've been hearing that there have been power blackouts, that there were fires that were started and local media in Yemen saying at least nine people killed as a result of these Israeli strikes. And this time yesterday we were talking about cautious optimism about the prospects of a ceasefire finally being agreed in Gaza. Where are we at with that? Any update on that? In general, still positive on the ongoing negotiations to secure this Gaza ceasefire

and hostage release deal. There are reports that the Israeli prime ministers to meet his top security brass later to discuss developments. The Israeli media are quoting different sources about where holdups are in the talks that mediators are working on. They're saying some of them over which hostages to release in the first stage, the issues of the Israeli future military presence in Gaza, how to ensure armed fighters don't return to the north of the Gaza Strip. Palestinian media is saying that holdups are over which Palestinian prisoners should be released and what terms they should be released under in exchange for Israeli hostages.

Yolande Nel in Jerusalem. The BBC has gained rare access to the often unheard stories of women inside Iran's notorious Evin prison, including accounts of torture and threats of execution. Thousands of women in Iran were arrested after the woman life freedom movement in 2022. From multiple reliable sources, BBC 100 Women has built a detailed picture of life inside the prison walls, revealing the stories of women who continue to protest for their rights despite the risks. Ghalnush Golshani reports and a warning some listeners may find this report distressing. When nationwide protests broke out in Iran in 2022, Nasim's life changed. Until then, she had been working as a hairdresser. She loved rap music and makeup.

But when 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died in police custody, Nassim and her friends decided to take to the streets in protest against the compulsory hijab. Like thousands of other women, she was arrested. she was arrested. Nassim was taken to the notorious Evin prison, where around 70 women are currently held as political prisoners. The BBC has obtained rare accounts of their daily life. Their words are spoken by actresses.

There's no sound here, no trees, and it just smells like poison, a poison that doesn't kill insects. For four months, Nassim was kept in solitary confinement in a tiny windowless cell. She had no access to a lawyer, family or friends. I'm interrogated 10 to 12 hours every day. The jailer would knock on the cell door and say, do you hear that? They're beating them. Be ready, you're next. Men molest you here and no one cares. Eventually she was moved to an overcrowded wing with up to 20 women in one cell.

Iranian authorities crushed the demonstrations, arresting tens of thousands of people and executing at least 10, but they couldn't break the spirit of the women in Evin Prison. They've kept their protests alive. Every Tuesday they hold demonstrations against executions, chanting in prison yard, refusing to move all night and staging hunger strikes. One of the inmates organizing the protests is Narges Mohammadi, a human rights activist and a Nobel Peace Prize winner.

The campaign has spread through jails across Iran, gaining international support. I painted the corridor like the ocean. It was like falling deep under the sea. Vida was arrested for her work as a journalist. In prison, she keeps herself busy painting on anything she can, from walls to bedsheets. I painted crumbling bricks and a beautiful forest beyond. Nargis joked that she would run and jump into the painting, but always hit the wall instead. They sprayed over the painting at night.

She also does portraits of the women here. One which was smuggled out of Evin is of Kurdish activist Pasha Nazizi. She's been sentenced to death, and there is great concern this may be carried out soon. Other women in prison are also facing execution. Vida says they often joke about it, trying to fight the dread with dark humor. We joke saying, why bother dyeing your hair anymore?

You're going to be executed. We laugh because we don't want to believe it. But deep down we're afraid. More than 800 people were executed for various crimes in Iran last year, the highest number in eight years according to Amnesty International. The harsh living conditions in prison and the difficulty accessing healthcare are having a lasting impact on many of the inmates. But the Iranian government denies allegations of human rights violations. It claims conditions inside Evin prison meet all necessary standards

and that prisoners are not mistreated. Vida went on hunger strike demanding medical treatment for Narges who suffers from life-threatening heart and lung conditions. Salam! Salam Azadi! Life and freedom! Earlier this month, Nargis was granted temporary release on medical grounds. As she's taken out of the ambulance on a stretcher, with her curly black hair uncovered and her fist raised in the air, she yells,

freedom is our right. book and Instagram. Still to come in this podcast, how preservation teams from the Czech Republic are helping to restore valuable Ukrainian art collections that have been damaged in the war. Available now on the documentary from the BBC World Service. Why are people who fled the atrocities of Bosnia's war still living as refugees 30 years later? We hear from survivors of the Srebrenica massacre who have spent three decades exiled within their own country. Wherever you go, you're not welcome. Srebrenica's Forgotten Refugees. Listen now by searching for the documentary wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

You're listening to the Global News podcast. A new report by the European Central Bank and the EU's insurance regulator calls for a big shake-up in Europe's climate insurance system. The idea is to make sure that more people are covered since right now only about a quarter of climate-related losses in Europe are insured. Leanna Byrne asked Linda Rusova from the bank's financial stability team and one of the authors of the report how it would work. With climate change we face more frequent and more severe disasters and this has economic

implications and costs. Since 1980s natural catastrophes cost around 900 billion euro in direct economic losses in the EU. Only a quarter of these losses are insured and this insurance protection gap is expected to widen further with the rising risks. To manage that, our paper proposes a two-pillar EU scheme. The first pillar, an EU reinsurance scheme, would increase insurance coverage for people and businesses. The second pillar, an EU disaster fund, would strengthen disaster risk management by governments. Now, what are the broader economic consequences of inadequate insurance coverage? There are three aspects to that. Low insurance coverage can pose risks to economic growth

as it delays economic recovery. It can pose risks to financial stability because banks provide mortgages to households and loans to businesses. If these are not insured, banks can suffer losses. Low insurance coverage also increases fiscal pressure for countries that step in to cover uninsured losses. Linda Rusova of the European Central Bank. The UN sanctioned mission in Haiti was meant to be a multi-nation effort led by the Kenyan police with a contingent of 2,500 officers from a number of countries. Six months later, only 400 Kenyan police officers have been deployed, as well as a handful of

others and the mission remains seriously underfunded. Our reporter Nawal Almagafi spent time embedded with the Kenyan forces before they headed into gang territory. A warning that this report contains distressing details. Driving through Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince in an armoured vehicle, we witnessed the aftermath of the daily street fighting between gangs, burnt down cars, tanks toppled over and ransacked neighbourhoods. This used to be one of the most populated areas of the Haitian capital.

It's now a ghost town. We're joining the Kenyan police on a patrol. It's not long before we come under fire. Just meters away, a human body is burning in the middle of the street. Haiti is a state on the brink of total collapse. Crippled by natural disasters and poor governance, violent gangs that control much of the country are terrorising its people. There are over a hundred of them operating in Port-au-Prince. We're going to meet the leader of one of the largest gangs.

Renald Destina, who goes by the alias Tilapeli, leads over a thousand men. His gang, Grand Ravine, is notorious for kidnapping. I want to ask you about all the young men that are coming to fight with you. What is it that motivates them? I am the one that's saving them from famine. The government doesn't create any job. It's a country with no economic activity whatsoever. Even the school system is almost non-existent.

It's basically a failed state. Back in the streets, the Kenyan police are doing what they can, but they're overwhelmed. Commander Godfrey Otonga is optimistic, despite the challenges. As of today, the population were demanding they wanted now our team to extend and go to other areas and pacify. There's overwhelming support and the population are very happy. So you came here six months ago with 400 of your officers. You were promised 2,500.

Six months on, no one's been deployed. Why is that? I can tell you that MSS is a unique mission. It has never been done the world over. This is the first of its kind. And anything new comes with challenges that one will have to accept. My president, he's actually the president of Kenya, pledged that he's going to bring to Haiti 1,000 personnel.

But they were meant to come in November. They still haven't come. Very soon, before the end of December. The issue is about the process. A long and painful process. Especially for the 760,000 children in Haiti, NGOs say are facing acute malnutrition. In the only public hospital still operating in Port-au-Prince,

we meet Venda. She avoided taking her two-year-old daughter to the hospital, fearing the violence in the streets. She prays it's not too late. I would like my kids to be able to eat bread, even if I can't. I would like to get proper care for my child, too. I don't want to lose her. We reach out to the Haitian government,

but they didn't agree to an interview. Human rights agencies and several international actors are now appealing to the UN to turn the Kenyan-led mission into a full-fledged peacekeeping operation. This would mean more money and more resources. But political instability in recent weeks resulted in even more violence than usual, pushing another 50,000 people to leave their homes. And it's hard to see where it all ends. Nawal al-Maghdafi in Haiti. Well, armed conflict has an effect on pretty much every facet of life including a nation's cultural heritage. In Ukraine, hundreds of libraries, museums and churches have been ransacked by Russian soldiers and many others destroyed by Russian bombs.

Mobile preservation units from the Czech Republic, fitted with top-of-the-range technology, are being sent to Kyiv to help restore valuable collections that have been damaged. Our Prague correspondent Rob Cameron has more. A peek inside ARC-1, a steel container fitted with sinks, presses and drying racks, where ancient Bibles, 18th century manuscripts, pre-war newspapers, anything printed or written on paper can be cleaned, dried and restored. Ark 1 has been specially designed for emergency on-site restoration and will soon be sent to Kyiv and then on to towns and villages where the fighting threatens Ukraine's priceless collections.

Tomas Foltin is the director of the Czech National Library, which is overseeing the project for the Czech Ministry of Culture. The Ukrainian Cultural Heritage is a magnificent part of the European Cultural Heritage and of course World Cultural Heritage. And for us it makes sense to support the Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Institution to preserve their collection for the future. And when we are able to do something, we have to do it. Project Ark uses unique Czech technology and expertise, painfully learnt during the devastating floods in Prague some 20 years ago. Financed by two Czech entrepreneurs, some 300 Ukrainian experts are being trained in

rescuing written material. Ukraine's deputy ambassador to Prague, Vitaly Usatiy, says much has already been lost. They were everywhere, in churches, in libraries, in administrative buildings, in private collections. This is the first aim of the Russian Federation to destroy Ukraine and its cultural heritage. Arc One is just the start. Kyiv will soon take delivery of two more vehicles fitted with technology, including 3D scanners, able to capture small artefacts. And it's also a measure of the enduring support in this country for Ukraine and its people. Rob Cameron reporting. Some two-feet toadstools, a black-soled zebra plant and a ghost palm are among the species being added to the annual list of plants and fungi which are new to science.

They're being shown at the Royal Botanical Gardens here in London where scientists have helped to describe dozens of new plants and fungi. Professor Bill Baker is the senior research leader. He spoke to Nick Robinson. We think that probably there might be a hundred thousand plants that aren't described. We think that three quarters of those are probably already threatened with extinction. If you don't have a name for something, if it isn't scientifically documented, you can't take any actions towards it. So it's part of the process of protecting biodiversity? Absolutely, yeah.

Now, tell us about some of your favourites because there's one you brought along with you. Yeah, well I brought the one I was most closely involved in and that's the ghost rat an which is a bizarre climbing palm that we found in Borneo. So I brought here one of our specimens, a palm folder here. Yeah and just to reassure people you haven't pulled it up by the roots. folder here. Yeah and just to reassure people you haven't pulled it up by the roots. Not just for this occasion, this is purely for science and in this folder there are a number of pieces of leaf and stem of the rattan. They're really important plants, they're the source of cane furniture, multi-billion dollar industry rests on rattan so finding a new one isn't trivial.

This one was very frustrating because it's actually been found many times over the last 90 years, but never with any flowers and fruit. And without those elements, it's really, really hard to do the describing part. Yeah. And what is it you do? So there we are with my untutored eye, that just looks like any old parm leaf there, which it clearly isn't and forgive me for saying that. But so what do you do as a botanist to establish that that is in inverted commas new and to document it? Okay, so I'm active in the field, I go to the forest, I collect palms, I bring them back and I compare them to all the specimens we have at Kew already. We have an amazing

sort of museum of plants, if you like, our herbarium with eight million specimens in it. And that's an incredible resource for comparing with known species. But in this case, we were still stuck because we hadn't got flowers and fruit. So my fantastic student at the time, Ben Kuhnheiser, did a whole lot of clever DNA work to establish its identity. Professor Bill Baker. And that's all from us for now, but there will be a new edition of the Global News podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered, you can send us an email. The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. This edition was mixed by Chris Lovelock. The producer was Oliver Burlau. The editor is Karen Martin.

I'm Janet Jaleel. Until next time, goodbye. Available now on the documentary from the BBC World Service. Why are people who fled the atrocities of Bosnia's war still living as refugees 30 years later? We hear from survivors of the Srebrenica massacre who've spent three decades exiled within their own country. Wherever you go, you're not welcome. Srebrenica's Forgotten Refugees.

Listen now by searching for the documentary wherever you get your BBC podcasts.