“My fight is to obtain justice for my son,” claims Mounia Merzouk, Nahel’s mother.

Her son was killed by a police officer in June 2023 after refusing to comply. More than a year later, the investigation is still ongoing and Mounia Merzouk recounts her pain and returns to the various criticisms she has faced.

On November 19, 2023, Mounia Merzouk expressed her distress and anger during a rally in Nanterre. The police officer who killed her only son Nahel five months earlier, on June 27 in this city in Hauts-de-Seine, after refusing to comply, has just been released under judicial supervision. Faced with the crowd of demonstrators, she swears that she will “keep fighting“for his son.”Justice for Nahel” she repeats, a cry immediately taken up by the demonstrators.

A reconstruction takes place in May, then a confrontation between the two parties in mid-July 2024. The investigation is still ongoing in this case. Florian M., the police officer who shot the 17-year-old, has been indicted for murder. At the heart of the investigation is the testimony of the two other passengers in the vehicle.still traumatized“, according to Nahel’s mother, and a video of this road check carried out by two motorcycle police officers from Nanterre on a street in the city, posted by a young girl and seen around the world, which contradict the version of the two police officers involved who plead self-defense.

More than a year after the death of Nahel, whom she raised alone, Mounia Merzouk responds to the many criticisms she has received, particularly for appearing a few days after her son’s death on a motocross bike in the middle of a crowd of young people. She also talks about her abysmal pain. A year after her son’s death, her condition is “Worse than the first time I was told about Nahel. You don’t feel anything inside you, it’s dead, you ask yourself a lot of questions. But you don’t have any taste for anything anymore”. Throughout these twelve months, between this fateful day, the media attention, the riots, the reactions from all sides, the judicial aspect, the moment which was the most terrible, the most difficult to manage, was according to her the prospect of “cross“those she names”the two murderers of (his) son outside“.

“This is not going to happen. You killed my son. I want you to be punished like everyone else.”

Mounia Merzouk

to franceinfo

Mounia Merzouk insists: “I can’t hug him anymore. I can’t hear ‘Mom, I love you’ anymore. I can’t hear anything from my son anymore, just his voice from time to time on recordings that were sent to me. But I have nothing anymore. In the morning, when I get up, his room in front of me, I see it empty. It’s hard, honestly, it’s hard“.

On social media, in particular, the single mother has been the target of much criticism, for example, about the education she gave her son. She defends herself: “I gave him a very good education and those who think otherwise, I would just like to see them alone running, hitchhiking at 2 or 3 in the morning when your son is sick to take him to the hospital urgently because you don’t have a car. And the next day, you have to go back to work and run from left to right so that your son doesn’t lack anything, so that he has a roof over his head. I would like to see these people who criticize, that they at least do what I did. Every morning, I go to the cemetery, I clean his grave and I communicate with him. I tell him about my morning at work“.

Mounia Merzouk was also attacked for her reaction after the death of her son. Critics considered her behavior inappropriate or offhand, when she had just lost her child. She paused before answering and finally sighed, “I have faith” and continues “Afterwards, every mother is different. It’s hard for me and as many people would like to have an explanation for the fact that I got on the bike, it’s because my son was a fan of ‘competition’. He was gifted, very gifted even.”

“They can think what they want, everyone grieves as they feel.”

Mounia Merzouk

to franceinfo

“Social media is very mean, but I have a lot more support. And those who support me, I thank them a thousand times. It warms my heart” she says.

If Mounia Merzouk believes that her media exposure has served to make visible her quest for justice for her son, she seems to regret it a little today. She has become a personality in Nanterre that people come to greet, some people sometimes ask her for a photo. She confirms that her fame goes beyond Nanterre.When I go out, people recognize me and come up to me and say: ‘We are with you with all our hearts’. As for the photos, it bothers me a little bit, I haven’t earned millions. I lost a child“, she says.

Mounia Merzouk insists, “I am not a star and I am even a little embarrassed because people know my life now, it is completely revealed, it is a little sad, but we are here, we survive, we continue. My fight is to obtain justice for my son. I am waiting for a trial for these two police officers, I am in a hurry. As I have seen several judgments of police violence with police officers outside, it scares me“. After taking sick leave following the shock of her son’s death, Mounia Merzouk returned to her part-time job delivering chemotherapy drugs to homes. “Patients need me“She hopes to soon be able to leave the brand new apartment where she had moved in with Nahel a year before her death.