The murder of 17-year-old Nahel M has sparked riots in cities across France, as well as in the town of Nanterre, west of Paris, where she grew up. An only child raised by his mother, he had been working as a takeaway delivery boy and played rugby league.
His upbringing was described as chaotic. He enrolled in a college in Suresnes, not far from where he lived, to train as an electrician. Those who knew Nahel, who was of Algerian descent, said he was well-liked in Nanterre, where he lived with his mother Mounia and had apparently never met his father.
His college attendance record was poor. Nahel had been in trouble before and was known to the police, but the family’s lawyers emphasized that he had no criminal record. He had given his mother a big kiss before he left for work, with the words “I love you, Mom.”
Nahel M Age
Nahel M was 17 years old.
Nahel M was Shot by French police in Nanterre
Shortly after nine in the morning this Tuesday, he was fatally shot in the chest, at point-blank range, at the wheel of a Mercedes car for fleeing during a police traffic control. At 17 he was too young for a license.
“What am I going to do now?” asked his mother. “I dedicated everything to him,” she said. “I only have one, I don’t have 10 [children]. It was my life, my best friend.”
His grandmother spoke of him as a “good and kind boy.”
“Refusing to stop does not give you a license to kill,” Socialist Party leader Olivier Faure said. “All the children of the Republic have the right to justice.” Nahel had spent the last three years playing for the Pirates of Nanterre rugby club. He had been part of an integration program for adolescents with difficulties in school, run by an association called Ovale Citoyen.
The program was aimed at getting people from deprived areas to do internships and Nahel was learning to be an electrician. Ovale Citoyen President Jeff Puech was one of the local adults who knew him best. He had seen it only a few days ago and spoke of a “boy who used rugby to get ahead.”
“He was someone who had the will to fit in socially and professionally, not a child dealing drugs or amusing himself with juvenile delinquency,” Puech told Le Parisien. He praised the “exemplary attitude” of the teenager, far from what he condemned as a murder of the character painted on social networks.
He had met Nahel when he lived with his mother in the suburb of Vieux-Pont de Nanterre before they moved into Pablo Picasso’s estate. Shortly after his death, an ambulance man, Marouane, launched into a tirade against a police officer, later explaining that he knew the boy as his little brother. He had seen him grow up as a kind and helpful boy. “He never raised his hand to anyone and he was never violent,” he told reporters.
His mother believes that the policeman who shot him “saw an Arab face, a little boy, and wanted to take his life.” She told France 5 TV that she blamed only the person he shot, not the police: “I have friends who are officers, they are with me wholeheartedly.”
“May Allah grant you mercy,” read a banner unfurled on the Paris ring road in front of the Parc des Princes stadium. “Police violence happens every day, especially if you are Arab or black,” said a young man in another French city calling for justice for Nahel.
But the family’s lawyer, Yassine Bouzrou, said it was not about racism, but about justice. “We have a law and a judicial system that protects the police and creates a culture of impunity in France,” he told the BBC.
Nahel had been subject to up to five police checks since 2021, known as Rufus d’obtempérer, refusing to comply with an arrest warrant. When he was stopped by the police, he was driving a Mercedes with a Polish license plate, with two passengers and without a license.
Recently, last weekend, he had reportedly been arrested for refusing to comply and was due to appear in juvenile court in September. His name was in a police file called Taj, used by authorities for a variety of investigations.
Last September a judge imposed a “disciplinary measure”. Most of the problems he had were with the cars involved: driving without a license or insurance and using fake license plates.
But Nahel had never been convicted, said family attorney Jennifer Cambla, and he had no criminal record. Being known by the police was not the same as having a criminal record, because he had never been tried for anything on his police file, he told French television.
“I think that in this type of suburb, it is quite rare that a young person has not been stopped by the police or has not been in custody,” Cambla said.
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