Former rapper Moha La Squale, whose real name is Mohamed Bellahmed, 29, was sentenced in Paris on Friday 5 July to four years in prison, including a one-year suspended sentence, for domestic violence, kidnapping and death threats against six of his former girlfriends. The court ordered that he remain in custody, having already spent nearly 17 months in prison

Between 2017 and 2021, he inflicted a repetitive pattern of violence on his victims, the prosecutor told the magistrates’ court. The young women were first seduced, then subjected to psychological abuse (insults, humiliating remarks), death threats, and finally physical abuse: slaps, hair-pulling, strangulation and suffocation with a pillow, she detailed.

During arguments, three of the six victims were also held captive, deprived of their phones to prevent them from calling for help, the prosecutor added.

The six women unanimously described the “double face” of their ex-partner: at once gentle, kind and affectionate, but capable of becoming jealous, angry, capricious, impulsive, violent and paranoid in a second, the prosecutor stressed.

She also called for an order for psychological treatment for the rapper, who, she said, had shown no signs of questioning his actions, claiming that his accusers were lying and plotting against him. She warned that this line of argument was “a little too easy” and raised fears of a repeat offence.

On Wednesday, the artist made contradictory statements about his “toxic” relationships, denying any physical violence but regretting having “done harm”.

He “lives in an imaginary world where the spotlight is on him” and his accusers are trying to “take that spotlight away from him”, quipped lawyer Fabien Guilbaud, representing one of the complainants. However, “they don’t want to harm him, they want to help him”, he insisted. His colleagues stressed the “system of domination” imposed by the rapper and the need to “heal the wounds” of their clients.

One of the complainants, still “terrorised by the idea of walking in the neighbourhood where they used to live”, hopes to “recover fragments of her life that he stole from her”. Another wants him to “look after himself and repair himself before he hurts other people”.