‘I begged them to let her go’

The mother of a French nanny who was thrown on to a bonfire after being tortured and murdered had begged her daughter’s captors to release her before her death, a court heard today (tues).

Sabrina Kouider, 35, killed Sophie Lionnet, 21, after accusing her of sleeping with her ex boyfriend, former Boyzone star Mark Walton, it is claimed.

Kouider and her unemployed boyfriend Ouissem Medouni, 40, held Ms Lionnet underwater in the bath until she admitted to false claims that she had plotted against her with star, the court heard.

A witness at the house in Wimbledson, southwest London, said he saw Kouider attacking the nanny and heard ‘screaming and splashing.’

Ms Lionnet’s mother Catherine Devallonne, 49, told French police on 23 September that in August Kouider called her and she begged her to send Sophie home.

Kouider refused to let the nanny go until she ‘told the truth’, the court heard.

Mrs Devallonne said: ‘She told me that she wanted to keep Sophie until she had disclosed to me where she had been.

‘She told me that she was scared because her ex husband had threatened her already.

‘She told me that she had taken Sophie out in the street that they had walked around the neighbourhood to show her where that had happened.

‘I begged her to let my daughter come back home, she told me she would do it as soon as my daughter told her where she had been.

‘She told me she thought of my daughter as her little sister, she wanted to protect her.

‘She would not tell me anything else.’

Speaking of Ms Lionnet’s departure for London, Mrs Devallonne said: ‘As for me, I was not so happy because she was going very far off.

‘For Sophie it seemed to be an adventure, she seemed very happy regarding this prospect.

‘I was very anxious when Sophie left. I missed Sophie a lot because we were so close.

‘It was the first time Sophie had travelled abroad all by herself.

‘My daughter was fragile and beautiful and I wanted to protect her.’

Mrs Devallonne also told police that Sophie was ‘naive’.

The witness, who cannot be named, said he could hear ‘screaming and splashing’ coming from the couple’s Wimbledon home on the night Ms Lionnet was allegedly being tortured by the couple.

He said he had seen Kouider the nanny two or three times when she was on the floor.

The witness said Medouni was ‘like a cat that was let out in the morning but didn’t come back until the evening’.

The court heard Ms Lionnet was forced to live and sleep at a desk in the £900,000 Southfields property, and that she was forbidden to leave the house until she ‘admitted’ conspiring with Walton.

Walton, who founded Boyzone while at school with Shane Lynch and later recruited Louis Walsh as manager, told the Old Bailey his relationship with Kouider was the ‘most turbulent’ he’d ever had, and she would often accuse him of abuse he never committed.

He claimed to have been in love with Kouider, who confessed to burning the body of her French nanny but denies murdering her.

Medouni at first admitted to killing Ms Lionnet ‘accidentally’ when he punched her in the face after holding her head under the water in the bath.

He later changed his defence and blamed Kouider, claiming to have been covering up for her.

Ms Lionnet, from Troyes, north east France, had moved to the UK in 2016 to improve her English.

She was battered to death, suffering fractures to her sternum, four ribs and her jawbone.

Medouni and Kouider, both of (164) Wimbledon Park Road, Southfields, southwest London, both deny murder and admit perverting the course of justice by burning the body.

The trial continues.