These are the cries of pain of a father. “The box is here! It’s here! I want to know the truth about my son’s death”, exclaims Karim Boulazreg, his eyes moist. Composed of nearly 250 people, the procession arrives on Chemin de Mazagran in Besançon, in front of the HQ nightclub. The 50-year-old wears a t-shirt with a picture of her son in a hospital bed. “He died. That’s not a fall. My son, he was beaten to death. He was beaten to death,” he repeats. The family does not believe in the thesis of the accident, privileged since the beginning of the case by the parquet floor of Besançon. In the procession, family members, friends, but also strangers who came to support this Saturday July 30 in the Franche-Comté capital.
A fall after being turned away from a nightclub
On the night of Saturday July 23 to Sunday July 24, Seïf Boulazreg fell violently in the Faubourg Tarragnoz, a few hundred meters from the nightclub, in a small steep path below the Citadel. He was chased by a security guard and one of the managers, after being turned back at the entrance. Agitated, the young man would have damaged a CCTV camera. He died of his injuries a few hours later in hospital.
“The message is not that the police did not do their job, on the contrary, explains Khaled Cid, a Besançon entrepreneur close to the family, at the head of the support collective. Today, it is to file a complaint, to give arms to the police so that they can carry out an investigation in the direction of voluntary or involuntary homicide. The investigation was conducted as if it were an accidental fall. We are demanding that it be carried out against the manager, that he can show why he used all this force against Seïf. What are the charges against him? Do they require a chase on such a long way? There are a lot of questions.”
“France is a country of justice”
Started from Place Pasteur in the city center, the procession then went to the scene of the tragedy in the Faubourg Tarragnoz. We heard crying. Young men have placed signs on the spot with the writing “Justice for Seïf” or “We want peace”. Maëlyz knew the young man well and can’t believe it: “He was my friend, we often went to the swimming pool together. He was a wonderful person who had his heart in his hand. France is a country of justice, so we want it to be applied”points the young woman.
– Raphael Aubry
The investigation is still ongoing, says the Besançon prosecutor’s office. After the result of the autopsy of the body on Friday, confirming the thesis of the fall, he is now waiting additional analyzes of the tissues of the deceased. The results should be known in several weeks.
– Raphael Aubry