As of this Monday, Abdellafit A. faces a 26-year sentence for the murder of his wife in August 2020, in Águilas
Abdellafit A. had been upset for several months. His disturbance began from the moment he set foot on the street, after leaving prison in May 2020, where he spent 15 months in the shadows for a drug trafficking matter. «He was very nervous and smoked a lot; His character changed a lot », a friend of his told the Civil Guard. When he was released, he returned to the family home, located on Tenor José Sánchez Galán de Águilas street, with his wife, Saloua, 40, and their two minor children. But something had changed. Abdellafit, 49 years old and Moroccan nationality, was not the same.
The time in the trena, halfway between the Sangonera la Verde prison and Villena, in Alicante, had taken its toll on his head, in such a way that he had become more macho than he already was. His 16-year-old daughter described him as a “more controlling person” towards his wife and with “obsessive behaviour” about a possible relationship that she thought Saloua had with another man. The ghost of infidelity, which engulfed the man’s reason, caused arguments between the couple in front of the minors in which she blamed him for the unfounded betrayals.
The daughter herself revealed the fear that her mother had towards her husband, especially since he attacked her in the head with an object years ago, when they lived in Barcelona. That fear, and a relationship that Abdellafit had with another woman, led Saloua to file for divorce in Morocco, but in Spain they were still married.
The relationship was broken between the two, and it was something that had passed through the doors of his house. Both the neighbors and the colleagues at the restaurant where Saloua worked stated that she bitterly confessed that during the summer months he insulted her, called her a prostitute, that he was very jealous of her and went to watch her at work. “She told him that she did not want to continue with him, that she wanted to separate from her, that she was overwhelmed and that she did not want to continue with the type of life that she gave her.”
“Saloua suffers mistreatment”
Saloua had never denounced her husband for physical or psychological violence. She went, however, to a specialized care center for victims of gender violence (CAVI), in which a report from a psychologist reflected that there were certain indicators of violence, and an observation: “There is psychological abuse by the husband and there has been physical abuse, but he does not want to report it, so as not to harm him ».
Abdellafit began, apparently, to hatch a plan in the month of August. People around the couple witnessed some details of his lugubrious intentions. Ten days before finding Saloua’s lifeless body, several neighbors reported seeing the man with a shotgun wrapped in a sheet, the same shotgun that was stored in the basement of the house, under a mattress, and with which he killed his wife. . The weapon never appeared. He told some friends that “something was going to happen.” He told a neighbor, on the bench from where he used to spy on his wife, that he had to “do something and go to Melilla.” He confessed to another acquaintance that he was preparing “something and was going to get out of the way.”
The children were on the beach when jealousy showed its jaws on August 29, around 5:00 p.m. in the family home, when Saloua arrived from working at the restaurant. Abdellafit had prepared steamed meat to eat with her. During the meal she told him that she no longer wanted to continue with him, “that she no longer wanted to live with him.” The man responded by reproaching him for being unfaithful. “I’ve seen you with men who drive different vehicles,” she snapped at him, as she yelled at him that she wanted to throw him out of the house to stay free and go off with another boy. The discussion escalated with continuous reproaches from him about her alleged infidelities and her desperate cries, clamoring for the definitive rupture of her relationship.
Around 8:00 p.m., Abdellafit went down to the basement where he kept the shotgun, returned home, and hid it in the kitchen. He himself declared that his head was gone, that he smoked a cigarette thinking what he was going to do, with the weapon in his hand. His wife was on the sofa in the dining room and asked her what she was doing in the kitchen. And she reminded him that in a few days he was going to change the lock and that when he wanted to see the children he should go. He blamed her for wanting to end the relationship after twenty years and, furthermore, he told her that what she really wanted was to get rid of her to go off with another boy. He assured that, immediately afterwards, his wife insulted him, and that was when he returned to the kitchen and picked up the shotgun. He entered the dining room and she asked him what he was doing with the shotgun, that if he wanted to kill her, that he should kill her, that he was not going to report him. At that moment, he rumbled a shot. The double barrel of the shotgun was half a meter from Saloua’s chest when a shot went through his body. According to the Civil Guard ballistics report, it was “a point-blank shot with a cartridge of slugs.”
With his wife’s corpse lying on the ground, Abdellafit fled. The eldest daughter of the couple found the body of her mother, when she returned from the beach along with her brother. She yelled for help and a Local Police patrol, which was passing by on the street, assisted her. Saloua became the second fatality due to gender violence in the Region in 2020, after the murder of a woman in Cartagena at the hands of her ex-partner by a hammer blow to the head. As of today, Abdellafit will be tried by a popular jury in the Provincial Court accused of a crime of murder. He faces 26 years in prison.
“The gun was fired accidentally”
“I accidentally touched the trigger and the gun went off. When I saw what she had done, I approached her: ‘Saloua, Saloua!’ I yelled. But she was breathing strangely, and I realized what she had done ». Abdellafit A. declared to the Civil Guard investigators that he fired his weapon, which killed his wife, but it was not his intention. However, both the prosecutor and the private prosecution, which is exercised by the lawyer Eduardo Muñoz Simó, maintain that it was a premeditated murder. “He bought a gun, kept it in the basement, again provoked an unfounded argument in order to gain enough courage to go down for the shotgun, aim his wife at a distance of less than 50 centimeters and shoot at point blank range,” he says. Simó in his provisional conclusions, which coincide with those of the Public Ministry.
When Abdellafit killed Saloua, he left the house, went down to the basement and hid the shotgun. He returned to the house, shook her wife and called her name again. “She did not respond,” he told the agents. “What have I done, what have I done,” he says he wondered when he saw the bloody body of his wife. He took the car key and left the house. He got in the vehicle and drove about 200 meters. He stopped and called a friend, supposedly the one who left him the shotgun and, according to his testimony, the person who encouraged him to kill his wife for being unfaithful. This man, a witness at the trial, was the one who gave him the place to hide, because at that time, Abdellafi was already in search and capture. «We arrived at a piece of land that was open and inside there were two boats. He told me to hide inside one, that I would be safe there, that no one knew where I was ». However, after a few minutes, the Civil Guard arrived at the plot, located on Professor Hernández Sevilla street, and arrested him. He assured investigators that, at that moment, he knew that his friend, who had allegedly left him the shotgun and encouraged him to commit the crime, had betrayed him.
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