Murder of Olivio Gomes: the officer sentenced to 10 years released after two months in detention

On 19 May 2026, the investigating chamber of the Versailles Court of Appeal ordered the release of Gilles Guilbert, a former officer of the Paris night-time BAC (BAC 75N), who had been sentenced less than two months earlier to ten years in prison for the murder of Olivio Gomes. The decision was made at the defence’s request and over the objections of prosecutors. It comes while the conviction is not yet final: Gilles Guilbert appealed as soon as the verdict was delivered, and will be retried before the Nanterre assize court (cour d’assises) from 9 to 18 November 2026.

On the night of 16 to 17 October 2020, Gilles Guilbert had shot Olivio Gomes, 28, dead at point-blank range with three shots outside his home in Poissy. He and his two BAC 75N colleagues had just tailed the young man’s Clio for nearly twenty kilometres, outside their jurisdiction. More than five years after the events, at the end of a trial before the Yvelines assize court, Gilles Guilbert was found guilty of murder on 27 March 2026 and sentenced to ten years in prison, with a lifetime ban from public office and a fifteen-year ban on carrying a weapon. For an on-duty police officer to be convicted of murder is exceedingly rare in France.

Laurent-Franck Lienard, Gilles Guilbert’s lawyer, announced his client’s release on the evening of 19 May on his public Facebook page. He writes that he obtained the decision “at our request and despite the prosecution’s opposition”, and calls on police officers to support Gilles Guilbert. He also gives his own account of the trial, describing a courtroom he says was “led by Assa Traoré and the mother of Nahel Merzouk” and which, in his view, exerted “very strong pressure on the jurors” – an account that questions the impartiality of the jury in an assize court decision.

An assize court verdict serves in itself as a detention order, even when the accused appeals. Release pending the appeal trial does happen – the law allows the investigating chamber to grant it when it finds that nothing further justifies keeping the accused in custody – but it remains rare for crimes of this gravity. Lienard himself presents the decision as “unprecedented”. It is not quite: on 27 March 2026, the Rennes Court of Appeal’s investigating chamber had already released former CRS riot police officer Rabah H., sentenced two and a half months earlier to seven years in prison by the Loire-Atlantique criminal court (cour criminelle) for the fatal shot that killed Aboubacar Fofana, 22, in Nantes in 2018. Rabah H. was also defended by Lienard’s firm.

Further reading:

• Collectif Oliv’Vit Haut, represented by Leonel Gomes, Olivio Gomes’s brother