The death of Nahel, killed at close range by the police at the end of June near Paris, caused a shock wave in France, which however risks fizzling out according to activists against police violence.
The broadcast of a video of the shooting that claimed the life of 17-year-old Nahel on June 27 near Paris during a traffic check played a key role in the country’s conflagration. It came to contradict the initial police version when France recorded 13 deaths in 2022 after refusals to comply during road checks.
We see the policeman who fired the shot, positioned at the level of the left front wing of the vehicle, firing a single shot when the yellow Mercedes driven by Nahel restarts.
Filmed by a witness and quickly broadcast on social networks, it went around the world.
“It’s the first time we’ve seen a video like that, frontal, so violent, an execution video. It’s a bit like our George Floyd video,” says Youcef Brakni, a pillar of the “Truth for Adama (Traoré)” committee, a young black man who died in 2016 in the Paris region during his arrest by the gendarmes.
“We have images at the time of the fire of the police officer, that is to say at the time when he takes his life”, abounds the lawyer Arié Alimi, specializing in cases of police violence, underlining how much the recordings of these Decisive moments are rare in these proceedings.
In this highly flammable context, activists hope to continue their momentum. But despite the emotion aroused by Nahel’s death, those interviewed by AFP do not see any structural change in sight.
Among their demands is the repeal of the paragraph of a 2017 law which relaxes the legal conditions for the opening of fire by the police, particularly in the context of refusals to comply and has led, according to them, to the multiplication of fatal shots.
Between hope and resignation
Heard on Wednesday by the Senate Law Commission, the French Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, ruled out any change to this law.
“It is not because a police officer does not respect the law that this law must be changed,” said Mr. Darmanin. “This policeman, who is entitled to the presumption of innocence, clearly did not respect the 2017 law”. The motorcyclist responsible for the fatal shooting was indicted for intentional homicide and imprisoned on June 29.
Former Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, author of this law, refuted that it constitutes a “license to kill”. “It’s a text that says: ‘You can only shoot when you are in self-defense.’ Outside the framework of self-defence, the use of force that is disproportionate and leads to dramas can be the subject of a criminal conviction of the police officers”, he specified.
Some are more open. President of the Law Commission, the majority deputy Sacha Houlié said he was in favor of an assessment mission at the start of the school year on the “refusal to comply” and on the 2017 law.
With the proliferation of cases of this type and their growing echo in society, Arié Alimi nevertheless detects signs of a new approach by the judicial institution to cases involving the police.
Twenty years ago, “we were looked at like crazy when we filed a complaint for police violence in working-class neighborhoods. Today the judges have become aware of the problem, but we are only at the very beginning,” he said.
For other seasoned activists, it is time for disillusion and weariness. “There is an exhaustion, we are wrung out, washed out, we have no help from anyone”, confides Youcef Brakni, “you are alone”.
“We have a government that is so deaf, and not only on this issue, that it almost never draws the consequences of serious moments in society,” laments Me Arié Alimi.