Legionnaires Guilty in Murder of Arab
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MONTAUBAN, France — Two French Foreign Legion volunteers have been sentenced to life imprisonment for the killing of a young Arab, whom they stabbed and threw from a speeding train.
A third defendant was sentenced to 14 years in prison after a four-day trial that ended Saturday.
The court in this southwestern French town found Marc Beani, 22, and Spanish-born Anselmo Elviro Vidal, 28, guilty of murder. Xavier Blondel, 26, was convicted of the lesser offense of causing grievous bodily harm.
The three were charged in the killing of Habib Grimzi, a 26-year-old Algerian, as they rode the train in November, 1983, on their way to begin training with the legion.
During the trial, the three admitted killing Grimzi. However, their lawyers argued that they had acted in a general climate of French racism and could not be held individually responsible.
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