A cyclist passes, in Nanterre, northwest of Paris, on June 6, 2024, in front of a fresco in tribute to Nahel, killed at 17 last year by a police officer during a check (AFP / Geoffroy VAN DER HASSELT )
A year later, a march in tribute to Nahel, killed at the age of 17 on June 27, 2023 by a police officer during a check, is organized on Saturday in Nanterre (Hauts-de-Seine), an affair which had caused several days of riots and became a symbol of the fight against police violence.
The march will start at 2:00 p.m. from the Charles de Gaulle esplanade, a few hundred meters from the Pablo Picasso district, where the teenager lived. The procession will then go along the boulevard de Pesaro before reaching Nelson Mandela Square, where Nahel died.
“It will be a silent march, where I will make a short speech,” Nahel’s mother Mounia Merzouk told RTL on Thursday. She will talk about her son, “how he was” and how “a grieving mother” lives.
Some 500 to 800 people are expected, according to a police source, with no risk of any particular disturbance expected. This demonstration was the subject of a declaration to the prefecture, according to the Hauts-de-Seine prefecture.
According to elements of the investigation, at the end of a chase, the vehicle driven by Nahel had been stopped by traffic. An initial police version, according to which the young man had charged at the motorcyclist, was quickly refuted by a video of the scene posted on social networks.
We see the two police officers on the side of the vehicle, pointing their guns at the driver. One of them shoots him as the vehicle starts again. The car then crashed into a concrete block, a few dozen meters further on.
The police maintained that they were in mortal danger because they were trapped between the car and a wall.
General view of the Pablo-Picasso district in Nanterre, in the northwestern suburbs of Paris, on June 6, 2024 (AFP / Geoffroy VAN DER HASSELT)
Florian M., a police motorcyclist aged 38 at the time of the events and indicted for murder, was placed in pre-trial detention for five months. He was released and placed under judicial supervision in November after several requests from his counsel.
A reconstruction of the facts took place on May 5: in the presence of their lawyers, the police officer responsible for the shooting, his colleague present that day and several witnesses compared their statements, in particular to establish whether Florian M. was in danger of dead.
A woman holds a banner reading “Justice for Nahel” in Nanterre on June 27, 2023 as cars burn during a march in tribute to Nahel, who was killed at age 17 last year by a police officer (AFP / Bertrand GUAY)
Nahel’s death led to riots of exceptional scale throughout France.
Public buildings attacked, schools and courts burned, shops looted: a Senate report estimated that the damage caused by the riots, shorter but more intense than those of 2005, represents one billion euros.
