The trial of a 26-year-old man accused of having shot and killed an 18-year-old and injured two others during a clash between rival gangs in the 19th arrondissement of Paris in 2017 opened on Monday before the court of assizes of Paris.
Kamel Zelloufi, who disputes the facts, appeared in the box wearing a light gray sweater and a white shirt.
He is being prosecuted for intentional homicide, attempted intentional homicide and criminal association.
Revenge of a rival gang
On the evening of September 22, 2017, around 11:45 p.m., according to witnesses and CCTV footage, around twenty young people from the Riquet district entered rue Henri Verneuil, a narrow pedestrian alley opposite the Rosa Parks RER station, where A group of young people from the Cambrai district awaits them.
The latter opened fire before pursuing their rivals in the rue Gaston Tessier.
If some shots come from weapons loaded with blanks, another wounds three young people.
One of them, Boubou Y., who had just turned 18, died in hospital overnight.
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Youssouf C., injured in the shoulder, is a civil party to the trial.
Currently imprisoned, he will be heard by videoconference, said the president of the court, Charlotte Bilger.
According to some witnesses, the Riquet gang wanted revenge after shooting blanks in a creperie in the neighborhood a few days earlier.
They were armed with knives, brass knuckles and tear gas canisters.
The accused, registered in the first year of BTS at the time of the facts before being imprisoned in December 2017 as part of another case, claims to have spent the evening with his sister and ordered a meal in a Chinese restaurant in the neighborhood.
But according to the prosecution, which relies on telephone tapping of his relatives, this version was developed with his sister.
Several witnesses also recognized him on CCTV footage of the brawl.
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Seven other young people from the same district - including three minors - were sent to the correctional court or the juvenile court for criminal association in connection with the same brawl.
An old rivalry opposes the Riquet and Curial-Cambrai districts with, according to the investigators, "many murders and particularly violent altercations at least since 2008".