For two years, 19-year-old Julien Videlaine and Nuzan U., a young woman of Kurdish descent of the same age, had been living a secret love affair. When her father surprised her in July 2014, he stabbed the young man with 19 knives and fled to Turkey. He was extradited to France in 2018 and will stand trial at the Beauvais jury court in September.
The 19-year-old French-Algerian Julien Videlaine and the Kurdish-born Nuzan U., who had been a couple for almost two years, had met in 2012 outside the Marie Curie high school in Nogent-sur-Oise. The football-loving student was in his final year at the time and was preparing to join the army as a mechanic at the Creil (Oise) military base the next year. She was preparing for a diploma as a beautician. The two are immediately attracted to each other and their relationship quickly develops into a serious one.
(…) Late in the afternoon, Julien Videlaine meets his girlfriend in her flat. The couple decides to have a bath on the upper floor of the pavilion. But while they are sitting in the bathtub, they are alerted by a noise from the ground floor.
Nuzan gets out of the water, eavesdrops and crouches down to look under the door. She sees her father standing on the landing. He asks her to join him on the ground floor. She panics. Julien has left his clothes in her room and she has to hide them before he sees them. But when she goes out into the hallway, Muhittin U. appears with a knife in his hand and attacks Julien. Nuzan tries to intervene and is injured on the hand. The man continues to stab furiously, but then stops, goes down the stairs, puts the knife down in the kitchen and flees.
(…) They discover the young soldier in a sitting position, his knees bent to his upper body, his head between his legs. He is naked, covered in blood and his body is riddled with holes on all sides. He had suffered 19 knife wounds, three of them in the middle of his heart. Nuzan told the police how her father had killed her boyfriend and explained that her father had been vehemently against her relationship with Julien because he was not of Kurdish descent like her.
(…) Muhittin U. was charged with murder and referred to the jury. After a postponement, the trial will begin on September 19. This hearing is impatiently awaited by the victim’s relatives. According to their lawyer, “They have a strong hope that the accused will speak the truth. They are also preparing for the worst, namely that he stubbornly insists on his dressed-up version of the truth”. Marianne