Nanterre massacre: this night, eight light beams in tribute to the eight deceased victims

Eight light beams will rise, in the night from Saturday to Sunday, at 1:12 a.m. sharp, in the sky of Nanterre from the roof of the town hall.

Eight light beams, which thousands of Nanterriens will follow with their eyes, in tribute to the eight victims of Richard Durn.

Thousands, they were already, for the 10 years of the tragedy, in 2012, when the names of each victim - Louiza Benakli, Christian Bouthier, Jacotte Duplenne, Monique Leroy-Sauter, Olivier Mazzotti, Valérie Méot, Michel Raoult and Pascal Sternberg - were given to the alleys that cross the Terrasses district, between the prefecture and Paris La Défense Arena.

Eight names that the city intends never to forget and which will be honored again during the commemoration ceremony organized on Sunday afternoon on the forecourt of the town hall renamed Place du 27 mars 2002.

Louiza Benakli, 40 years old

This Sunday, the President of the Bar Michel Guichard and several lawyers will be present during the commemorations organized on the forecourt of the town hall of Nanterre.

They will salute the memory of all the victims but will have a special thought for their colleague, Louiza Benakli.

Close to the PCF, this lawyer, born in Nanterre in 1961 into a Kabyle family, was known for her fight for women in distress.

She had been elected since 1995 and served as deputy mayor for early childhood.

Christian Bouthier, 46 years old

This fierce fighter of school failure and violence at school, professor of history and geography at the Victor-Hugo college, then at the André-Doucet college in Nanterre had been decorated, for his action, with the Academic Palms.

Activist for Unef when he was a student, he then joined the PCF and became a municipal councilor in 1998. In Nanterre, many remember him for his unfailing commitment to young people and his school construction projects. , in Burkina Faso, where he took his students.

Jacotte Duplenne, 48 years old

If the young people of Nanterre were authorized, in the summer, to use the equipment of the university, they owed it in large part to Jacotte Duplenne.

First assistant to youth, then assistant in charge of secondary and higher education from 1997, this communist activist, whose Toulouse accent made her sympathetic from the outset, had worked hard to develop links and bridges between the city and the university.

A trainer in a center for young disabled people in Suresnes, she was the mother of two children.

Monique Leroy-Sauter, 43 years old

This auditor, mother of a 10-year-old daughter, was the specialist in financial matters for the opposition group (UDF).

A group where this professional figure, of a discreet nature, played a central role.

She had notably kept the accounts of the Nanterre association now, chaired by Florent Montillot, the former emblematic leader of the right-wing opposition in Nanterre.

Olivier Mazzotti, 38 years old

At the mere mention of his name, a strong emotion seizes Pierre Creuzet.

"He was my best friend, a man always ready to help who adored above all his two children" remembers the former leader of the UDF.

Grandson of Italian immigrants who arrived in France in the 1930s, Olivier Mazzotti was, like Christian Bouthier, professor of history and geography in a college in Val-d'Oise.

A Licra activist, he had notably been campaign director for Florent Montillot, the main face of the opposition from 1983 to 2001. After joining the municipal council in 2008, he was elected in 2001 on the list led by Pierre Creuzet.

A job as college principal awaited him in the south of France.

Valerie Méot, 40 years old

When she put her suitcases in Nanterre, in 1985, Valérie Méot was only 23 years old.

But already a solid political conscience.

A consciousness that this teacher's daughter, herself a kindergarten teacher, forged very early, with her brother, during a childhood partly spent in Saigon.

She quickly showed her opposition to the Vietnam War and did not hesitate to get involved.

At Unef, where she became national secretary, then at the National Council of Communist Youth.

Elected in 1989 in Nanterre, she became, in 1999, the first secretary of the local section of the Communist Party.

Michel Raoult, 58 years old

This aerospace engineer, father of three daughters, entered the municipal council of Nanterre, shortly before the tragedy, in the spring of 2001, by being elected on the opposition list.

But the man was far from unknown.

He embodied the anti-abortion fight and made himself known by committing himself, from the 1970s, to the defense of life within the association laissez-les-vivre.

In 1982, he notably founded the association for conscientious objection to any participation in abortion (AOCPA) renamed "Choose life" in the mid-1990s. He was also one of Christine's traveling companions. Boutin with whom he created the Union for Life and the National Confederation of Catholic Families.

Pascal Sternberg, 30 years old

A convinced ecologist, holder of a DESS obtained at the University of Nanterre, this hyperactive activist joined the Greens in 1992. It was then in Suresnes that he first tried to convince people of the merits of ecology by integrating the Greens-PS opposition.

At the same time, he discovered local politics in Nanterre, where he became project manager for the green group - which was then in the majority, for six years, from 1995 to 2001. Tipped to take over from Sylvain Demercastel at the head of the environmental group, Pascal Sternberg had become a fierce opponent of the deputy mayor, Jacqueline Fraysse, and was even to face her in the legislative elections.