A broken destiny. Buried on Saturday in Nanterre, Nahel, 17, is described by those who knew him as a “quiet guy”, sometimes “borderline”, with a life similar to that of many other young people from the city, between getting by and small hitches with Justice. A fan of rap and motorcycles, the young man, who was buried on Saturday in the Mont Valérien cemetery in the strictest privacy, was raised alone by his mother in Nanterre, west of Paris. He lived in a bar building in the Cité Pablo Picasso, at the foot of the business district of La Défense. This is where the first troubles broke out on Tuesday shortly after the shooting of a policeman who was fatal to him, during a traffic check while he was driving a rental car.
During a white march Thursday in his memory, his first name served as a rallying cry for thousands of people who saw in his broken destiny the symbol of the unfair treatment reserved according to them by the French police for young people. from North African or black African immigration. “Nahel, he was a quiet guy. He’s committed offenses, okay, but in what world is that a reason to kill him? “, protested Saliha, 65, a resident of her neighborhood. “Nahel is our son to all”, said other demonstrators during this tribute which degenerated into violence.
School dropout
Devastated, his mother Mounia described the young man as his “best friend”. “It was all for me,” said this woman who expressed her “revolt” while refusing to cast shame on the entire police force. “I don’t blame the police, I blame one person: the one who took my son’s life.” The echo of his death resonated well beyond the French borders and especially in Algeria, the country of origin of his family.
The Algerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed its “dismay” and affirmed that Nahel was one of its “nationals” towards whom France has a “duty to protect”. The young man, who was also very close to his maternal grandmother, worked as a delivery man, according to his family’s lawyer. He had also started an “integration journey” in the Ovale Citoyen association which supports young people through sport and had established a partnership with the Nanterre rugby club.
“Not a bandit”
Nahel’s criminal record was clean but he had had some run-ins with the law for refusals to comply, according to the Nanterre prosecutor, according to whom he was due to appear in juvenile court in September. According to the authorities, it was his dangerous driving on Tuesday which had justified the police control which was fatal to him.
“For me, Nahel was the typical example of a neighborhood kid, out of school, sometimes borderline but not a highwayman, and who had the will to get out of it, ”testified Jeff Puech, president of Ovale Citoyen, in the columns of the daily Sud-Ouest. “He was going to build a new future,” assured the association on Twitter.
A month ago, Nahel had realized the dream of many young people: he had appeared as an extra in a clip shot in Nanterre by Jul, French rap star. We see him perform, with his fingers, the gesture of rallying the fans of the Marseille rapper. Like athletes and other rappers, Jul shared on social networks the call to financially help Nahel’s family, in memory of the “little brother”.