Seven years after the events, will the Safsafi family finally be able to turn the page?
"If there was a cause, we could move on but there is none," says Samir Safsafi, Amine's father.
In January 2014, Amine died of his injuries after a violent assault in the Kremlin-Bicêtre, near the Porte d'Italie.
The only fault of this teenager without problem, aged 15 and completely unknown to the justice system, was to live in Gentilly.
He was quietly returning to his home when about fifteen teenagers from the Kremlin-Bicêtre literally fell on him and beat him up.
Suffering in particular from a head trauma, he died of his injuries in hospital.
Nine minors already sentenced in 2019
From this Tuesday and until Friday March 12, five defendants, all aged 16 and 17 at the time of the facts, appear before the court of assizes for minors of the court of Créteil.
They will be judged in particular for violence committed in a meeting resulting in death without intention of giving it.
"My client, now 24 years old, has nothing to do with the person he was at the time of the facts, assures Me Orly Rezlan, the defense lawyer of one of the five. accused, who has rebuilt his life in the provinces.
Refusing to comment on the merits of the case, she simply specifies that her client "participated in the violence".
Gentilly, March 15, 2018. Samir Safsafi may have answers on the death of his son during this second trial.
LP / A.-LA
In April 2019, before the juvenile court ruling in criminal matters, because they were under 16 years of age at the time of the facts, nine young people had been sentenced for this real lynching.
One of them had been sentenced to the maximum penalty, ten years in prison, two others were sentenced to eight years and two others to six years.
The other four defendants were sentenced to terms ranging from four to five years in prison, with suspended sentences.
His father affected by the recent deaths of minors
"We will never be satisfied with the sentence because, for us, they should have been tried for murder as adults and have more", declared in our columns the father of Amine, at the end of the first trial.
On the eve of the second, Samir Safsafi refused to comment on the case concerning his son.
"We just have the impression that parents who have lost their child do not count," he explains, visibly affected by the recent deaths of minors which occurred during fights between gangs.
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Indeed, last week, two 14-year-old teenagers lost their lives during brawls in the neighboring department of Essonne.
On February 23, Lilibelle was fatally stabbed in Saint-Chéron.
The next day, a teenager was killed in Boussy-Saint-Antoine, after being hit with a knife.
Prevent fights between gangs
While awaiting the verdict, the phenomenon of gangs and the ensuing brawls remain one of the authorities' concerns.
In 2020, 350 arrests were recorded in the context of gang wars in Val-de-Marne, the origin of which is "not always rational", insisted the new prefect, Sophie Thibault, who participated Monday noon in a meeting with the three ministers of the interior, education and justice on this phenomenon.
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She announced on the sidelines of this meeting to register "in the footsteps" of her predecessor, Raymond Le Deun, who had started work in conjunction with the prosecutor Laure Beccuau for a monitoring and prevention system to fight against this phenomenon.
A local delinquency treatment group (GLTD) has been set up to provide a diagnosis and identify the areas concerned.
The idea being to intervene "more upstream, to identify the gatherings and prevent it from degenerating into brawls", according to the chief of staff of the prefect.