French President Francois Hollande on Wednesday
pardoned a woman who killed her abusive husband, allowing her to walk free from
jail where she was serving a 10-year sentence.
Hollande
“considered that Mme (Jacqueline) Sauvage’s place was no longer in prison but
with her family,” the president’s office said in a statement.
The
case, which has seen many twists and turns since Sauvage, who is in her late
60s, shot her husband Norbert Marot three times in the back a day after their
son hanged himself in 2012, is a cause celebre in France.
Hollande
accorded Sauvage a partial pardon in January this year for killing Marot, a
violent alcoholic who she said raped her and her daughters.
But the pardon reduced her prison sentence
rather than commuting it, and in August a French court refused to release
Sauvage, who has become a symbol of the suffering of domestic abuse victims in
France.
One
of her lawyers, Nathalie Tomasini, said she was “overcome by joy and emotion”
over Hollande’s pardon.
The
French president’s power to commute or suspend prison terms was enshrined in
the constitution in 1958.
Under
a 2008 reform, the president may no longer decree blanket pardons, just
individual ones.
-AFP
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