Led by the mother and relatives of the victim behind a banner “Justice for Nahel and for all the others”, the procession set off at the beginning of the afternoon from the Charles-de-Gaulle esplanade, a few hundred meters from the Pablo-Picasso neighborhood where the teenager lived, towards Nelson-Mandela Square where the teenager died.
Behind them, many silent young people wearing a white T-shirt saying “Justice for Nahel, executed on 06/27/2023”.
“We are here to support the mother”explained to AFP Fatou, 16, who came with them from her friends.
The young man was killed on June 27, 2023, by a bullet fired at point-blank range by a motorcycle police officer who was checking the vehicle he was driving.
According to elements of the investigation, the vehicle driven by Nahel had been stopped by traffic following a chase.
A first police version, according to which the young man drove towards the biker, was quickly refuted by an amateur video of the scene posted on social networks.
The two police officers can be seen on the side of the vehicle, pointing their guns at the driver. One of them opens fire as the vehicle starts up again. The car then crashes into a concrete block a few dozen meters away.
The police maintained that they were in danger of death because they were trapped between the car and a wall.
The perpetrator of the shooting, Florian M., a motorcyclist aged 38 at the time of the incident, was indicted for murder and imprisoned for five months. He was released and placed under judicial supervision in November after several requests from his lawyer.
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 were compared their statements, in particular to establish whether Florian M. was in danger of death.
Nahel’s death led to riots of exceptional scale throughout France.
Public buildings attacked, schools and courts burned, stores looted: a Senate report estimated that the damage caused by the riots, shorter but more intense than those of 2005, had cost one billion euros.
