Four Frenchmen sentenced to prison for Geneva nightclub assault

The 2018 violent attack against five women at a Geneva nightclub sparked protests in Switzerland. swissinfo.ch

Sentences handed down by the criminal court in Thonon-les-Bains on Wednesday for an attack on five young women in Geneva in 2018 ranged from four to eight years. A fifth man was found not guilty.

In the early hours of August 8, 2018, a group of men attacked a woman outside a nightclub in Geneva. Four women who tried to help the victim were also attacked. All five, aged 22-33, were taken to the hospital, two with serious injuries, one of whom ended up in a coma. 

The case sent shockwaves through Switzerland. The alleged assailants were later arrested in France and put on trial in Thonon-les-Bains, near the Swiss border.

After three and a half hours of deliberation, the court convicted four of the five French nationals. It threw out the aggravating circumstance of violence with a weapon, concluding there was “not enough evidence to establish with certainty that a weapon had been used” that night.

Two men, both aged 22, received sentences of eight years’ and five years’ imprisonment, respectively. A third man, aged 24, received four years. And the fourth, aged 24, was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment. The prosecution had sought sentences of five to 13 years, after describing the events outside the Geneva nightclub as a “war scene” of “unprecedented violence” with grave consequences for the victims, news agency AFP reported.