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| - A Moroccan gardener found guilty of murder in France in 1991 on the basis of a message scrawled in blood at the crime scene launched another legal bid to clear his name, his lawyer said Thursday. The gruesome stabbing of wealthy widow Ghislaine Marchal at her villa on the French Riviera is one of the best-known murder cases in France and has become the subject of several books and a film. Her gardener, Omar Raddad, was sentenced to 18 years in jail in 1994 despite his protestations of innocence, with the key evidence being a misspelled message scrawled on a door in Marchal's blood which read "Omar killed me". Raddad, who was freed in 1998 after having his sentence partially commuted by former president Jacques Chirac, has unsuccessfully appealed against his conviction in the past, but is hoping new DNA evidence will convince judges to order a re-trial. "If I am lodging a case at the review court, it's because the new evidence is sufficiently strong," Raddad's lawyer, Sylvie Noachovitch, told reporters at a press conference on Thursday after filing the bid at the Paris court. "In the name of human rights, I ask you to support him because truly this man is innocent... he has been pardoned obviously, but that does not exonerate him," she added. The new evidence is a DNA report dating from 2019 which claims that fingerprints from four unknown people have been identified at the crime scene. An expert using updated technology found some of this DNA mixed in with a second incomplete message written in blood at the crime scene, which Haddad's lawyer sees as strengthening the case that the gardener was framed. A previous appeal based on DNA evidence and handwriting analysis in 2002 was rejected by the review court. The case has captivated France because of its lurid details, but also because of claims that Haddad, an immigrant described as gentle and calm in court, was a victim of discrimination. His son, Karim, told Le Monde newspaper this week that his father, now aged 59, was depressed and living like a recluse in the south of France, but still had hope of being cleared. Two handwriting experts at the original trial said Marchal was definitely the author of the messages in blood as the capital letters exactly matched her writing on crossword puzzles -- one of her pastimes. But a glaring grammatical mistake in the message -- "Omar m'a tuer" (Omar killed me) -- fuelled intense speculation about its author and has become one of the most famous lines in French crime history. Many people questioned whether Marchal, a highly educated heiress, would have used the infinitive (tuer) instead of the past participle (tuee) for "killed". The prosecutor claimed Haddad killed her after an argument about a cash advance on his wages to pay off his gambling debts. Lawyer Henri Leclerc, who represented the victim's family in the original trial, has dismissed the claims of a miscarriage of justice. "She had the courage to accuse him before her death. How could she make a mistake?" he told Le Monde. "It's a bit like an Agatha Christie novel this case, and people refuse to believe that the key to the mystery is so simple." bl-adp/sjw/jv
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