If there were a "purity" index for femicides, Mounir Boutaa's murder of his ex-wife Chahinez Daoud on May 4, 2021, in Mérignac, southwestern France, would have a very high value. The trial of this construction worker for murder was to open before a criminal court in Bordeaux on Monday, March 24. The ruling by investigating judges confirming the indictment order paints the "archetypal portrait of a femicide perpetrator taken to the extreme," in the words of Julien Plouton, the lawyer for Daoud's parents. The case contains a deadly cocktail of severe male domination, repeated violence against women, police and judicial deafness to warning signs that have long been documented by research on violence, the victim expressing her will to permanently break up, and how she was punished for it: with murder, in this case premeditated, as an act of ultimate possession.

Where does the spiral of femicide begin? Born in 1976 in a seaside town on the outskirts of Algiers, Boutaa told investigators of a happy childhood, dropping out of school at the age of 15 and arriving in France at the age of 23. The following year, he got married for the first time to a woman named Séverine. They had three children. She reported numerous acts of violence: threats, racial insults, forced intercourse resulting in pregnancy, slaps, twisted arms and kicks. This first decade of married life already ticked all the boxes of coercive control.

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