Exemplary young man or rebel without a cause? The two faces of Nahel, the teenager who was killed by the police in France

At the same time, the French and international media have sought to profile the murdered teenager. Lacking a complete profile, there seems to be a debate as to whether Nahel was a “exemplary young man”as some defend, or a “petty criminal”according to others.

Nahel was known as a “helpful and well-behaved” child. loved” in Nanterre, reports the French radio station bfmtv. However, among the policemen of this municipality on the outskirts of Paristhe teenager had a reputation for refusing to obey orders: he had already been the subject of up to five police checks since 2021, for refus d’obtemperer (refusal to cooperate).

[Gases lacrimógenos, incendios… El homenaje al joven muerto en Nanterre degenera en violencia]

Before the occasion that ended his life on Tuesday, the young man had been placed in police custody last Saturday. According to BBC“was due to appear in juvenile court in September. A lot of the trouble he’d gotten into lately had to do with the cars“.

Originally from the Vieux-Pont neighborhood, in the center of the city, Nahel did not know his father and was the only child of a single mother, Mounia, with whom he recently moved to the Pablo Picasso urbanization in Nanterre. About his age, it is known that he was only 17 years old, so born in 2005 or 2006. Mounia described her son as “her biggest confidant” of hers in a video she posted in response to news of her murder.

@leparisien « I lost a 17-year-old boy »: the chagrin of the mother of Nahel, t*é for a police officer in Nanterre #nanterre #nahel #nael ♬ are original – Le Parisien

Mounia, from Algerian descent, reacted desperately to the news, as is to be expected from a mother who loses her child. “What am I going to do now? I dedicated everything to him. I only have one, I don’t have 10. It was my life,” she said. However, on the same Wednesday he called a white march on Thursday that mobilized the entire country, with her at the head. In the protests, Mounia showed himself with relative integrity. Later, in an interview on the television program “C à vous”, she declared about the death of her son at the hands of the Police: “It’s a man’s fault, not the system’s”.

Nahel’s passage through the school was irregular and convulsive. The young man was enrolled in a CAP (certificate of professional aptitudea kind of FP) in an institute for become an electrician. I often missed class bfmtv. The young man combined his studies with the delivery of food at home, with which he I was trying to earn some money. In his free time, he practiced sports: he liked soccer since he was little, he participated in a program of integration through sport and was a member of the Pirates, his hometown rugby team.

[El policía francés que mató al joven magrebí, en prisión preventiva por hacer un mal uso del arma]

According to Ovale Citoyen program director Jeff Puech, Nahel was a “kid who used rugby to get ahead” that “he had the will to integrate socially and professionally,” and was not “a boy who dealt drugs or entertained himself as a criminal,” Puech told le parisien. The coordinator of the program that the young man attended praised the “exemplary attitude” of the adolescent, which is far from the defamation that has been made of him on social networks.

Since Nahel’s death, the French media and far-right personalities have insisted that he is a repeat offenderalthough the victim’s lawyers have indicated that he had no criminal record, according to West France. Indeed, the teenager had been implicated in other cases of resisting authority, but had never been convicted, according to his lawyer, Yassine Bouzrou.