On Sunday December 11, an octogenarian was indicted in Charleville-Mézières for the murder of a young African immigrant. He is said to have shot the young man two days earlier, because he could no longer stand the incivilities he had suffered for years.
According to French daily Le Figaro, the events took place two days earlier, on Friday December 9, in a working-class neighbourhood of this town in north-eastern France. That day, Hocine Abdellaoui, 82, a retired worker and former member of the Commandos Marine, shot Mahamadou Cissé, 21, with a .22 Long Rifle, the public prosecutor in Reims told the media.
The Commandos Marine is the Special Operation Forces (SOF) of the French Navy, and Abdellaoui had participated on the side of France in the Algerian war.
The suspect was arrested in the aftermath by the police, under difficult conditions, since he took refuge in his home with his weapon, pointed it at the police officers who had come to apprehend him, before surrendering in extremis after the usual summons. His home was searched shortly after his arrest, the prosecutor’s office said.
In police custody, the suspect admitted the facts and explained that he had shot his young neighbour out of “exasperation”, because the victim and his gang had been smoking cannabis and consuming alcohol, blocking doors and adopting a behaviour that was “anxiety-provoking” for the neighbourhood. This had been going on for 9 years.
The suspect said that this explosion of anger, which had been suppressed for too long, had occurred when, on his way home from his usual game of pétanque, he had been insulted and harassed by the victim and his group, who had prevented him from returning to his home.
The victim was known to the police for two convictions for contempt and rebellion, but not for drug offences, the prosecutor said. The suspect, previously unknown to the police, was charged with “murder, possession of an illegal weapon and violence with a weapon against a person in authority” and placed in pre-trial detention.
Meanwhile, an operation to evacuate 771 migrant street squatters took place on Boulevard de la Chapelle in the 18th arrondissement of Paris on Friday morning. About 60 people were entrusted to the care of associations. The rest were men, mainly of Afghan nationality, a police source told Valeurs actuelles. They were distributed by bus throughout France. Opposition politicians fear that such decisions will lead to more insecurity in small villages.