A 32-year-old man has been placed under formal investigation for assassination and remanded in custody over the death of the influencer Sonia Bellina, the public prosecutor of Nîmes, Cécile Gensac, said in a statement on Friday 21 August. The body of the 29-year-old, partially burned, was found among vines at Saint-Gilles in the Gard on 12 August, in a village some twenty kilometres from Nîmes.
According to the prosecutor's account, investigators from the Nîmes research section of the gendarmerie, working with the Gard grouping, arrived at two arrests after a week of cross-checking. One of the two was released once initial verifications were done. The second was brought before the investigating magistrate at the end of his custody and placed under investigation on a charge of assassination. BFMTV reports he was picked up on Wednesday 19 August and held for forty-eight hours.
What made the case, on BFMTV's account, was equipment he was already wearing. He had been convicted in December 2023 by the Lille court for domestic violence committed in the Nord, a mixed sentence of prison followed by supervision by the sentence-enforcement judge, and the conviction obliged him to wear an anti-approach bracelet to protect his former partner, who lived 800 kilometres away. BFMTV says the geolocation data from that bracelet showed him near the vines at Saint-Gilles where the body was found. Since moving to the Gard at the end of December 2024 he had been followed by the department's prison rehabilitation and probation service.
The device did not produce an admission. BFMTV reports that in custody and in the investigating judge's office the man said nothing about the circumstances of the death. He did acknowledge, the prosecutor said, having had a relationship with the victim on the night in question and the night before, then declined to explain further in later interviews. The prosecutor's statement says various elements could give grounds to suspect he was her last contact, in the context of an appointment made in her work as an escort, after a first contact the previous night, and describes a criminal record running back to 2010 for violent behaviour and matters connected to narcotics among others. Sonia Bellina posted videos on TikTok, where she was followed by more than 250,000 people.
Why it is on the board
Top of Le Monde's most-read list and second on BFMTV's when we collected, with three clips on the case sitting in the French video lens at the same time. It is the only item on today's French lists that readers of two different publishers both put near the top; everything else that repeats is one newsroom appearing twice on its own list.
What stands out to us is the shape of the evidence. The bracelet exists because a court had already decided this man was dangerous to a woman, and its assigned job was to keep him away from one named person 800 kilometres north. It was not watching the Gard. It was watching him, everywhere, and that is why there is a record at all.
확인: BFMTV · franceinfo