TWO men were sentenced yesterday to 15 and 13 years in prison for fatally beating a bus driver in the French city of Bayonne after he refused to let aboard passengers without masks during the Covid pandemic in 2020.

Wyssem Manai and Maxime Guyennon, both aged 25, were sentenced last night by a court in France’s southwestern department of Pyrenees-Atlantiques.

The attorney-general had asked for 15 years imprisonment for the two men.

They were on trial for five days for intentional violence resulting in the death, without the intent to kill, of Philippe Monguillot, a 59-year-old driver whom they assaulted on July 5, 2020.

“We asked for exemplary justice, we can’t say we got it. For me an exemplary justice would have been 30 years imprisonment,” the maximum penalty for such offences, said Veronique Monguillot, the widow of the victim, as she left the courtroom.

After headbutting one of the two men, the driver was beaten and left beside the bus with serious head injuries.

He later died after five days in hospital. – AFP, September 22, 2023.