Point blank. Versailles 1972, by Philippe Artières: a very dark affair

«I write with a shovel», explains Philippe Artières. Not so much to look for treasure, to find the gold of words or that of time, as to dig up a corpse. That of Mohamed Diab, a heavy goods vehicle driver killed in Versailles by a burst of submachine guns, on November 29, 1972, at the Noailles barracks police station, the famous “19“. The Algerian worker with poor mental health had caused a scene at the hospital at the bedside of his dying mother.

The sub-brigadier who pulled the trigger cited self-defense. The testimonies of the victim's sister and widow, present at the time of the events, persuaded Gisèle Halimi to defend the civil parties. But the criminal court, the court of appeal and the indictment chamber in turn pronounced the acquittal of sub-brigadier Robert Marquet.

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