“Together against violence”, some 350 people, including many teenagers, took part on Sunday in Sarcelles (Val-d'Oise) in a march in memory of Ali, 17, killed on November 12 by a boy from the same town and of the same age, imprisoned since.
Behind the banner “violence has no place in our streets or in our hearts”, Ali's mother remained silent, wearing a t-shirt bearing her son's first name and the drawing of a dove . An aunt of the teenager spoke to thank the police and the municipality including the socialist mayor, Patrick Haddad, who was present alongside other elected officials. She concluded the demonstration with the rally's slogan: “let's act together against violence.”
Broken families
“It’s our little brothers who are killing each other, it’s our mothers who are crying,” said a figure in the fight against deadly brawls in Val-d’Oise, Adama Camara, who himself lost his son in 2011. 18-year-old brother, stabbed, and served time in prison after trying to avenge him. “Your life matters, little brothers, revenge, forget it,” he said to the teenagers present, adding: “You can say we are good guys, there is 1 to 0, we are going to get revenge , but you will do it and you will go to prison, everyone will forget you.”
Under the guard of police officers, the march then left the parking lot where Ali died “from a stab to the heart” according to his relatives, in the afternoon and in front of witnesses in front of a shopping center in Sarcelles, about twenty kilometers north of Paris. A 17-year-old teenager from another neighborhood, suspected of having carried out the stabbing, was arrested on November 16 by investigators from the Val-d'Oise interdepartmental judicial police service, according to a source close to the 'investigation. Around fifteen police officers were mobilized for these investigations, on the trail of rivalries between young people from different neighborhoods.
On November 13, during a meeting in memory of Ali, Assa Traoré, known as an activist “against police violence” since the death of her brother Adama in 2016, also spoke as a former educator at Sarcelles, calling for deconstructing the fact that it has become “normal for a child to kill another child”. “We are in brawls that have been going on for 20 or 30 years,” Assa Traoré stressed, asking the young people present to stop the mechanism “you killed my brother, my friend, so let’s start again.”
