This is a step in the investigation that Nahel’s mother was impatiently awaiting. A reconstruction of the death of the 17-year-old teenager is organized this Sunday, Passage François-Arago, in the prefecture district, in Nanterre (Hauts-de-Seine). On the precise scene where the young man was killed by a police officer who opened fire on him after refusing to comply, on June 27.
“His family, and especially his mother, hopes that she will confirm the thesis that she has maintained since viewing the video showing the death of her son, namely that the shooting was neither necessary nor justified,” explains to 20 minutes his lawyer, Me Nabil Boudi.
This judicial act aims in particular to verify the versions delivered during the investigation by the two police officers involved. On the day of the incident, these motorcyclists from the Hauts-de-Seine territorial traffic and road safety company noticed a yellow Mercedes registered in Poland driving at high speed. They decide to check its occupants and go after the vehicle, which ends up getting stuck in traffic jams. The two police officers dismounted, took out their weapons and ordered the driver to turn off the ignition.
Wave of urban violence
But suddenly the car starts again. Florian M., 38, opened fire at point-blank range on Nahel who was behind the wheel. The German racing car ends its course a few meters further on, embedded in a pole. The bullet fired by the official passed through the left arm and thorax of the victim who, despite the intervention of the firefighters, died in the morning. Placed in police custody, “the police officer explained his action by the desire to avoid another escape from the vehicle and by the dangerousness of the driver’s driving behavior”, indicated the public prosecutor of Nanterre, Pascal Prache.
Indicted for intentional homicide and placed in pre-trial detention, Florian M., who pleads self-defense, was released on November 15 and placed under judicial supervision.
Death threats
Nahel’s death triggered a wave of urban violence in the country, the most serious since 2005. Since the events, the two bikers and their lawyers have been the targets of numerous death threats. Me Laurent-Franck Liénard, Florian M.’s lawyer, indicated that he had filed a complaint with the police station in the 17th arrondissement of Paris. The national center for the fight against online hatred (PNLH) then opened an investigation.
Last November, a man in his forties received a sentence of two months suspended prison sentence for writing to the criminal lawyer, on X (formerly Twitter): “son of a racist, you and your client will pay”. A 36-year-old Angevin man was even sentenced last January to a ten-month suspended prison sentence for sharing the contact details of the police officer who fired the shots on TikTok. Information which had already, in part, been published by the newspaper Oise Hebdo.
Relocation request
In these conditions, it is impossible to guarantee the safety of the two officials during the reconstitution scheduled for Sunday, believes Me Thibault de Montbrial, the lawyer for Florian M.’s colleague who was placed under the status of assisted witness. As revealed RTL, he wrote to the two investigating judges to ask them to relocate this act, the date of which leaked to the press. A request refused by the magistrates who, in their response given last Friday, wanted to be reassuring. “It’s an aberration,” slips 20 minutesworried, a source close to the matter.
But for Nahel’s mother’s lawyer, it is important not to move this reconstruction. “We want to see precisely whether the police had a fallback solution or not. And you have to be on the same road, with the right distances. »