an angry mother after the attack on her son in Nantes

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The anger and indignation are clear in Basma’s voice. His 17-year-old son was attacked, Monday September 23, 2024, by around ten teenagers in front of his establishment, the Michelet professional high school.

Added to her child’s pain is a feeling of injustice. Of the ten young attackers, only one appeared before the children’s court, which Thursday December 19, 2024.

A neighborhood conflict?

“It’s not at all a simple theft of a cell phone or a hat,” assures the mother. “Before we lived in Sillon-de-Bretagne. Today we live in the Northern neighborhoods“. However, there appears to be a rivalry between these two districts of Nantes.

His son, who was out of school at the time, decided to resume his studies and enrolled at the Michelet high school. He was attacked barely a month after the start of the school year.

One of the young people, also educated at Michelet, knew that my son lived in Sillon. From there, he gathered his whole gang to nab him outside high school. They asked him several times if he lived in Le Sillon, he replied no, that we now lived in the northern districts.

Joined by Nantes newsthe Nantes police, are not aware of any particular animosity between these two neighborhoods, although the phenomenon exists elsewhere in the city.

However, this “rivalry” between neighborhoods is corroborated by a video of the events, in which we can hear insults towards the victim because of his supposed belonging to the Sillon.

A video of great violence

Because this attack was filmed by one of the attackers. News Nantes was able to view the video. It is extremely violent.

We can see around ten teenagers there, most of them masked attack Basma’s son. Punches and kicks rain down. They follow him as he tries to escape and continue to beat him up. The one filming enthusiastically encourages the others.

“It was targeted, everything was organized in advance. They knew what time my son was going out,” Basma explains. “They came from all sides. »

He received four stab wounds and not two, as was said at the time. Two to his hand, one to his thigh and another grazed his other thigh.

“Just for his thigh, he had 30 days of ITT,” she laments. “It was the right hand that was most affected. She was pierced on both sides
and had 20 stitches.” The boy has not yet regained sensation in this limb. Basma knows that her son could have been killed.

“He doesn’t want to see anyone anymore”

Since then, the boy no longer goes out and hardly eats. “He doesn’t want to see anyone anymore, he is angry with everyone but particularly with National Education,” his mother despairs.

Basma’s son, who had so much wanted to return to his studies, is out of school again “while most of his attackers are still there.”

The high school was supposed to help me find another establishment but at first, the only thing they offered me was to enroll him in the local Mission. Four of the attackers attended Michelet high school, only one of them was expelled.

The principal of the Michelet vocational high school did not respond to our requests at the time of writing. A place was finally found for Basma’s son in another high school.

A “non-priority” file

“I managed to get the names of my son’s attackers,” says Basma. Names that she immediately passed on to the police. “I even have their addresses!” »

However, only one defendant finds himself before the courts. “They didn’t go see the others, they didn’t do anything at all,” she told Nantes news, very uplifted. The police declined to comment as the investigation was still “ongoing”.

Basma hired a lawyer, Me Boezec. The latter puts forward the hypothesis that the prosecution “was essentially in an emergency mode” and preferred to focus on a single defendant.

My client is not at all in a gang rivalry situation. He is the victim of labeling by his former membership of the Sillon. He is a scapegoat. A judicial investigation should have been opened. It’s very serious! If the knife had passed a few centimeters to the left, the outcome could have been fatal. It’s incredibly violent.

While waiting for Thursday’s hearing, Basma is not losing his temper. Neither against the school nor against justice. “For me, it was an attempted murder by an organized gang. There were ten of them, three of them were armed with knives. Should my son have been killed? “.

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