“I received repeated blows in the face, I was spitting blood”, says Mahedine Tazamoucht

Mahedine still has a childish look on her face. This 19-year-old young man is an electrician in Athis-Mons, in Essonne, and still lives with his parents. We meet him at his lawyer Me Arié Alimi, terrified listening to the details of his testimony.

Mahedine who, a week after the events, still has his face marked, recounts how on the evening of May 9, he spent the evening calmly with two friends in the car of one of them, listening to music, drinking glasses of whiskey and coke. The car was parked in a small parking lot three minutes from his building.

Around 3am, Mahedine returns but cannot find his keys. He then turns back and returns to the car. In the meantime, three police officers arrived and checked his friends. Mahedine is looking for his keychain under the back seat when, according to him, the first salvo of violence intervenes: “One of the three officials grabbed me by the collar, put me on the ground, handcuffed me and took my shoes off. So he sprayed tear gas right in my face, with none of the three giving me any control.“, he recalls.

“I had so much difficulty breathing that they took me to the Juvisy hospital but when I got there, I immediately denounced to the people who were there the violence of my arrest for no reason.“. It would not have pleased the police who finally decided to go directly to the police station. It was there, in a corridor without a camera, that the young man said he had experienced the worst, still handcuffed, sitting on a chair with his boxer shorts for only clothing.

“They were tasering my arm, my neck. I was crying in pain.”

Mahedine Tazamoucht

at franceinfo

“It was repeated blows in the face, kicks in the shins. I was coughing up a lot of blood. These policemen stepped on my feet with their boots. My hands hurt so badly from the handcuffs being tightened until they bled. I begged them to loosen them because I couldn’t feel my hands anymore” he confides.

“It was torture, free shots. Three men were hitting me, three others were laughing. There were also tasers to the arm and neck. A colleague told whoever had this weapon to taser me – if you forgive me the language – the ‘balls’. I felt in his eyes that he was going to do it. I protected myself by putting one leg over the other“, details Mahedine who explains that he ended up, after about 30 minutes, falling unconscious for a few seconds on the ground.

“At that moment, all the same, one of the three policemen got worried and came to take my pulse. I opened my eyes. For them, everything was fine. They ended up throwing me in the cell“, explains the young electrician who, a week later, still has black traces of dried blood around his wrists, his face bruised and traces of blows on many places of the body.

Mahedine was released from police custody around 8 p.m. on May 10, without being served with any concrete charges. He had been seen by a doctor, heard by a judicial police officer to whom he explained that he had been the victim of numerous beatings in police custody the previous night. It was there that he understood that the police, in their report, had explained that they had been called to their sector of Athis-Mons for a brawl, and had arrested Mahedine and his two friends for “contempt and rebellion”.

“There were only 3 of us in this parking lot and we are friends. What fight are they talking about? As for the rebellion, I had only been back in the parking lot for a few seconds and I wasn’t asking for anything, I was just looking for my keys in a friend’s car. What outrage are they talking about?“Asks Mahedine.

The boy says he is still in shock from that night, not feeling well, afraid to go out even for a simple grocery run. “I can’t sleep soundly anymore and I only fall asleep after dawn. I plan to see a psychologist to manage this state” he says.

His mother, Linda Lemaini, 46, also struggles to hide her emotion tinged with incomprehension. On the morning of May 10, when, by dint of looking for information about her son who had gone to bed, she ended up learning that he was at the police station, she had a natural concern but was also relieved finally, knowing her son “safe” with police officers. She explains that she was terribly disillusioned.

“I was miles away from imagining someone doing this to a person in a police station.”

Linda Lemaini, mother of Mahedine

at franceinfo

“I found my son injured, shocked. And since then, it’s a bit as if our life had stopped. I am a mother of three children and I am bruised by what my son may have suffered. Me not I can’t sleep well anymore. My heart aches as soon as Mahedine tells what happened. I’m afraid he’ll come out. He’s no longer safe. I’m stunned by the situation. We’re very bad“, she said very moved.

Mahedine, from the end of last week, went with his mother to the premises of the IGPN (General Inspectorate of the National Police), the police force, to file a complaint. Now defended by the lawyer of the Paris bar, Arié Alimi, he will file a complaint with this time a civil party for acts of torture and barbarism.

The prosecution of Evry, without delay, opened Monday, May 16 a preliminary investigation entrusted to the investigators of the IGPN, who therefore begin their investigations and should soon hear the officials implicated.

“We talk a lot about Malik Oussekine in recent days with the series released on the death of this student. The same could have happened to Mahedine. I would like to say that it is an abuse, an isolated drift but I am afraid that in reality the attitude of the police forces has not changed since 1986. We very often hear stories of violence on the part of the police . Because he is Arab and comes from a working-class neighborhood, the police allow themselves to treat him like an animal. This must stop. We expect a strong reaction from the political power and for Mahedine, that the investigation be taken seriously so that justice is done“, claims Me Alimi.

“So that they do not start such an outburst of violence again on someone else, I think it is urgent that these police officers be suspended. Frankly, if this is their conception of the profession, it is absolutely necessary that they stop exercising it“, comments on his side Mahedine decided to recognize what he was the victim of.

The medico-judicial service has, for the moment, assessed his injuries at four days of incapacity for work. In the grip of what looks like post-traumatic stress and hearing very badly in the left ear on which he received the most blows, he obtained an appointment to carry out new examinations.