FADI Ayoub has returned to Namibia as a free man.
A year and four months after being extradited to France, where he was facing criminal charges dating back more than 20 years, Ayoub is back home with his wife and their two children in Windhoek.
In contrast to when he left Namibia in October 2012 in the custody of French Interpol officers, the Lebanese-born Ayoub can now again travel freely. To prove that freedom, he has at hand a judgement of the Seine-Maritime Criminal Court which records that he has been acquitted on all charges he faced in that court.
Ayoub left Namibia after agreeing to be extradited to France, where he had to face criminal charges dating back to January 1992. On 6 December last year, he was acquitted on those charges of rape and kidnapping. After spending seven months in prison in Namibia, followed by a year and two months in prison in France, he was free again.
“I knew one day I’m going to win. And I won, and I came back,” Ayoub told The Namibian last week Wednesday.
“I knew very well I was not guilty,” he said.
“My big mistake in this story was I running away from France. If I had stayed there, I could have won then [in 1992],” he said.
Ayoub, then aged 24, was first arrested in France on a charge of rape in January 1992. He was accused of having raped a female acquaintance in the city of Rouen on 9 January 1992.
Two months after his arrest, he was released on bail, but he breached his bail conditions by leaving France while the charge against him was still pending.
According to Ayoub, he decided to leave France because he feared that he would not receive a fair trial.
He later settled in Namibia, and got married to a Namibian in December 2003. He and his wife have two children.
Since his arrest in Namibia, pending extradition to France, at the start of March 2012, he has been through tough times, Ayoub said.
The conditions he experienced in Windhoek Central Prison, where he was kept in custody, were terrible, he said.
A legal battle he fought in an attempt to be granted bail and to stop the extradition proceedings cost him about N$1 million in legal fees before he decided to return to France to stand trial, Ayoub said.
While in prison in Namibia and, thereafter, in France, he has suffered financial losses of about N$3,5 million, with some of his livestock stolen and his businesses in Namibia and Angola regressing or coming to a standstill in his absence, he recounted.
His plans now are to rebuild his businesses – which include livestock trading and the vehicle trade – and to focus on raising his children, he said.
His daughter was seven and a half weeks old when he was arrested in Namibia. By the time he was acquitted, and freed in France, she was almost two years old.
He had been seeing his wife and two children when they paid visits to him in jail in France, though.
“My wife stood by me through good and bad,” Ayoub said. “She’s an angel.”
Ayoub said following his acquittal – on the day after his and wife’s tenth wedding anniversary – he is claiming compensation in an amount of 1,2 million euro from the French government.
In the meantime, he is back in the country where he plans to stay, he said: “Namibia is my home.”
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