https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sOU9Z9BEmQ French musician Marouani says he is victim of 'criminal actions' amid plagiarism row
Marouani, the founder of the disco group 'Space,' was detained on Tuesday night alongside his lawyer Igor Trunov. Marouani’s legal representative said Kirkorov had agreed to an out-of-court settlement in a copyright infringement case that had earlier been dismissed by a Moscow court.
SOT, Didier Marouani, founder of the band 'Space' (French): "After a minute, 60 policemen broke in, and they didn't behave very kindly, they said nobody should speak, they took everybody’s phones and didn't allow us to talk with anyone, and everyone had to be silent. It was like a bad detective film, like bad detective cinema, we have of course all seen these films, but to experience all of this on my own was an absolutely different thing. So we became the victims of a trap, we became the victims of something very stupid, criminal actions, for eight hours I was a criminal suspect. For around six to seven hours we were in that bank, we didn't do anything; we weren't allowed to call anyone. Then we were transferred to the police [station], the sirens were on, they didn't act very kindly towards us as if we were criminals, when in fact we are not the criminals, we are the victims."
SOT, Igor Trunov, Didier Marouani's lawyer (Russian): "Today after this press conference, we are going to the offices of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, where they have invited Didier for questioning, what kind of questioning we don't know. The lawyer Ainar and Didier are going there. And I'm going with them in order to try and get access to our case file. Today's press conference has been considered a threat. From the very beginning we planned to hold a press conference as soon as we filed a suit; that is how it was announced. However, we didn't manage to do this because the police prevented it. [Russian singer] Philipp Kirkorov came to this meeting with TV representatives. There was a big group of around 60 people including police, FSB [Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation] and other law enforcement officers. They said that they have been following Didier since the moment he arrived in the country. Earlier that day they had pretended to be waiters, wearing bow-ties, and waited for this provocative arrest in the restaurant which had been chosen by Philipp Kirkorov and his lawyer."
