One year after Nahel’s death in Nanterre, an update on the investigation

Since June 27, 2023, numerous investigative actions have been carried out. But if the investigation should be completed in the coming months, gray areas still remain.

A year ago, on June 27, 2023, Nahel, 17, was killed by a police officer when he refused to comply in a street in Nanterre (Hauts-de-Seine). After this tragedy, three nights of intense riots took place across France. But what about, one year later, the judicial information on this case which has become a symbol of the fight against police violence?

For almost a year, Florian M., a 38-year-old police officer, who belonged to the Hauts-de-Seine territorial road safety company, has been indicted for intentional homicide. After Nahel’s death, he was placed in pre-trial detention for five months. A legal decision which caused a lot of emotion in the ranks of the national police, up to the director general, Frédéric Veaux.

In an interview with Parisianhe had then considered that“Before a possible trial, a police officer had no place in prison”. In November 2023, the official was released and placed under judicial supervision. He no longer practices his profession for the moment, even if he is not prohibited from doing so. Since the facts, he has only been subject to a ban on carrying a weapon. This police officer is accused of carrying out the fatal shot in the chest of Nahel, aged 17. The teenager was driving erratically in Nanterre at the wheel of a yellow Mercedes sports car without a license.

That morning, Florian M. chased Nahel’s vehicle, with his colleague Julien L. The two police officers on motorcycles, in a first intervention report – the Pégase file, a sort of police logbook – had justified their opening fire saying that the driver had tried to drive away by charging at them. This version was immediately contradicted by a video of the scene shot by a witness and distributed massively on social networks.

Florian M. then continued to explain that, even though he was indeed on the side of Nahel’s car, he had acted to stop an immediate danger that threatened him, his colleague and the other people driving around, especially pedestrians.

Numerous investigative actions have been carried out over the past year. The investigation should be completed in the coming months. There were obviously interrogations of the various witnesses and protagonists, notably Florian M. and Julien L.

There was an autopsy and expert assessments to establish to what extent Nahel, who has traces of a blow on his arm, may or may not have been hit by the police. There was a reconstruction of the facts in situ on May 5th. It was a near second-by-second reconstruction that took the investigating judges 14 hours. Finally, there was work on the videos of the scene to try to define what the officers shouted at the teenager before the shooting. “Cut it” (meaning the engine) or “Shoot it”two versions oppose each other: the analyzes did not make it possible to establish with certainty the words spoken.

The challenge of each investigation in this case is to establish to what extent the police officers were in immediate danger at the time of the shooting. If at the end of the procedure, justice were to refer the police officer indicted, Florian M., to a criminal court, this question of the legitimacy of his action will be at the heart of the debates.

In the meantime, both sides are sticking to their positions. “Even if everyone regrets the lethal outcome, the shooting carried out by my client was legitimate, in accordance with the law. There was no offense on his part and although he certainly took a life, his gesture helped save others”comments Me Laurent-Franck Liénard, counsel to Florian M. “The scene was extremely quick and its analysis is quite simple. We hope that justice will vindicate us”he adds.

The lawyer has just obtained a first victory in another case, which has many similarities with that of the death of young Nahel. This is the file concerning the death of a 24-year-old man in September 2022 on avenue Henri-Matisse in Nice. The victim was killed by the shooting of a police officer whom he did not threaten according to the images filmed by a neighbor. At the end of May, the Nice prosecutor’s office announced despite this that it was requesting a dismissal of the case. It’s up to the judges to decide now.

These requisitions are justified by the legislative provisions created in February 2017 in the law known as “Cazeneuve” – and denounced by many relatives of victims and activists as a “license to kill”. In the Nahel case, the lawyer for the teenager’s mother, Me Nabil Boudi, explains that everything in the file shows that the police officer who fired the shot was not in the path of the car, that he did not was not in a situation of danger and that his shooting was therefore neither necessary nor justified. A year after the death of his son, there is still “a feeling of anger“at Nahel’s mother’s house, according to franceinfo’s guest lawyer, Thursday June 27.”Mounia is a single mother, a saddened mother. There is a big gap in his life and that is something that the investigation will not be able to fill. This is something that grief cannot fill. Every day, she wakes up without her son. She’s a single mother“, he added.

His client, still very upset a year after the death of her son, originally wanted to organize a gathering on Saturday June 29 “against police impunity” in Nanterre, but with the first round of legislative elections being held the following day, the event, under this name, was becoming risky in terms of security. The situation led her to change the title of the event: it will be a silent march in memory of Nahel.