Sophie Lionnet: Fashion designer 'name-dropped Donald Trump among list of powerful friends' in interrogation of French nanny days before murder, court told

A fashion designer accused of killing her French nanny boasted of “friends in high places” and name-dropped President Donald Trump during an interrogation just days before the alleged murder, the Old Bailey heard today.

Sabrina Kouider, 35, and her partner Ouissem Medouni, 40, are accused of murdering Sophie Lionnet before disposing of her body by burning it on a bonfire in the garden of their £900,000 Wimbledon home.

The trial has heard hours of recordings as Medouni and Kouider angrily questioned 21-year-old Ms Lionnet in the weeks before her death, in September last year, convinced she had been involved in a sexual abuse plot.

The couple suspected Kouider’s ex-partner, Boyzone founder Mark Walton, had been “in league” with Ms Lionnet, and that the nanny had helped him to sneak into their home as part of the plot.

During one of the interrogations, captured in mobile phone recordings, Kouider boasted of her connections to the rich and famous by saying “my friends are in high places”, the jury heard.

“You know what I told you about Donald Trump, you started to laughed”, she said to Ms Lionnet.

“When I told you about my friends, you have seen them. Those in journalism, actors, and producers, in make-up, in fashion, and in music.

“They are clean people.”

Under questioning from prosecutor Richard Horwell QC, Medouni conceded that Kouider’s boasts may not live up to reality: “I will say that she knows people that are not as famous as you imagine.”

Mr Horwell said: “Although she may have made that statement – ‘I know people in high places’ – she didn’t actually?”, and Medouni replied: “No.”

Medouni, who met Kouider at a funfair in May 2001, has told the court he “made bad choices” when they were questioning Ms Lionnet, but he denies having anything to do with killing her.

He insists he was asleep at the time she died, and has said Kouider was previously responsible for inflicting injuries on the young au pair by beating her with a length of electrical cable.

“It was always a balance and I made the wrong choices, I regret it”, he said.

“If I had done the right thing we wouldn’t be here today.

“I still don’t believe that I’m here, I’m still in shock that I’m in jail and Sophie died.

“I’m still not realising because I was having a normal life, I was a normal person.”

Medouni said the final video of Ms Lionnet, looking gaunt and emaciated, in which she tells him details of a sexual abuse plot involving Mr Walton, was “what he wanted”, telling jurors he planned to take it to the police as evidence.

But prosecutors say the abuse claim is not true, that Ms Lionnet was kept prisoner, abused and beaten until she said what they wanted, and that Medouni and Kouider planned to kill the nanny after the questioning had ended.

Medouni and Kouider, both of Southfields, southwest London, each deny murder and have pleaded guilty to perverting the course of justice.

The trial continues.