the legislative elections at the heart of the tribute to Nahel

A year after the death of Nahel, killed on June 27, 2023 by a police officer after refusing to comply, nearly a thousand people paid tribute to him on Saturday in Nanterre during a silent march. The procession set off around 2:30 p.m. to reach Nelson Mandela Square, where the teenager died a year ago. At the head, a dozen friends of the young man surrounded his mother, Mounia Merzouk, behind a banner demanding “Justice for Nahel and for all the others”.

Deeply moved, Mounia Merzouk thanked the participants and invoked the memory of her son, “happy, helpful” et “smiling all the time” whose nickname was “Yes yes” car “he didn’t know how to say no”. “When I go home, I no longer have anyone, I no longer have my baby”she said, demanding that “justice be done”. “The lives of our children in the neighborhoods have value (…) No matter what we do, we can’t take a child away like that. It’s unforgivable. (…) Nahel didn’t know he was going to be killed. Maybe arrested, sent to prison, taken into custody, beaten, no problem, I would have accepted. But a bullet? No…, no, a mother doesn’t accept that. Losing a child who had just turned seventeen, who was in a hurry to get his license to be in compliance? No…”

According to other excerpts circulating on X, Nahel’s mother also added : “Refusing to comply? Who doesn’t do it in life?… Who doesn’t drive without a license? Tell me… We’ve all tried to drive without a license.

“Against Oblivion”

In the march, where no police officer was visible, Fatma, an activist within the Urgence Palestine collective from the 18th arrondissement of Paris who preferred to keep her name quiet, came to Nanterre “Against oblivion.” “There is nothing, no trial, the policeman is free and Nahel will not return.”she lamented.

“We have the impression that it’s an eternal start again so we are here to say that we have not forgotten, to demand justice for Nahel”added Bouna Mbaye, 33, to AFP. “Police violence and crimes are victims of people of a certain color, it’s not a coincidence”, said the young man, keffiyeh on his shoulders. All along the route, the first round of the legislative elections scheduled for Sunday was in the minds of the demonstrators.

“I am extremely worried about the rise of fascism which will inevitably make our law enforcement even more repressive”confided Messaouda, a 38-year-old educator who came from Lyon with a sign “refusal to comply with racism and police violence”. Mounia Merzouk also mentioned Sunday’s electoral deadline by calling on young people to “wake up”. “You know very well what happens tomorrow, wake up, we must avoid deaths (…) we must protect our children”, she said. The march, which involved 650 people according to the police headquarters, ended peacefully around 4:30 p.m. with cries of “Justice for Nahel!” or “No justice, no peace !”

Riots of exceptional scale

Nahel 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 after he refused to comply.

The shooter, Florian M., a 38-year-old motorcyclist at the time of the shooting, was charged with murder and imprisoned for five months. He was released and placed under judicial supervision in November after several requests from his lawyer. His pretrial detention had reached “a record for longevity in a case of police violence”, noted a source close to the investigation contacted by Le Figaro , in November 2023. .

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 sparked riots of exceptional magnitude across France. Public buildings were 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, had cost one billion euros.