Le Figaro Nantes
The room was packed despite the late hour. Shortly after midnight, in a monastic silence, the president delivered a verdict eagerly awaited by the public, present since 14 p.m.: four years in prison, two of which were suspended. The prosecutor's office had requested five, one of which was suspended. After three hours of hearing, Jamal was found guilty of the charges against him. He was tried in immediate appearance in Nantes for having voluntarily exercised violence resulting in an ITT of more than 8 days on a 28-year-old individual, with the use of a weapon, by carrying a knife, and this in a state of legal recidivism.
On the night of April 1 to 2, 2023, around 2:30 am, firefighters had been called to the city center, Bouffay district, after a brawl, to rescue Baptiste*, whose biceps was sliced on 24 cm. That evening, he was walking out of a bar and heading to a nightclub with six friends. At the initiative of a fight whose course was hotly discussed, the group of friends found themselves facing two young individuals, Lounes and Jamal. The latter, born in Lens and aged 18, then took out a knife with a blade between 10 and 20 cm, after receiving a first blow. He touched Baptiste's arm, who then bled to death and survived thanks to a volunteer firefighter who was present that evening.
Jamal had then managed to escape unlike his sidekick, caught by a security guard. Lounes then denounced his boyfriend, allowing the police to come and arrest him the next morning, at his home. His clothes found in the laundromat, including a white jacket with a red mark on his wrist, confirmed his identity. Before being remanded in custody, the perpetrator first contested the use of a knife. In custody, he spoke of a gray metal blade belonging to the opposing camp. He also indicated that he had been the target of provocative remarks.
"Racial profiling"
Thursday night, dressed in a gray polo shirt, the young middle finger with a thin face and mustachioed delivered a different story from his box. "I had a knife on me that night." "Why did you challenge him in custody?" asks the president about this change of version. "I was scared. [...] That evening, I was out with a friend. We went for a walk downtown. A man calls us out and says, "Tonight no thieves". We stopped, we left in front of him with the greatest politeness. There, he looks at me. I saw that he was not in his normal state. I decided to go back on my way. There, he gave me a huge blow in the face. I had a knife on me, I took it out." A knife he would have bought because he had been told that "in Nantes, you can be killed for nothing".
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My first intention was not to touch them, just to scare them, "says the one who claims to have made a "mistake". Already convicted of drug trafficking, Jamal had recently arrived in Nantes to join his sisters and was no longer allowed to appear in the Aude department. He was also forbidden to go out at night. "It had been months since I went out. There it was in the middle of Ramadan. We live more in the evening than during the day. I wanted to get some fresh air," he said.
"He simply walks in the center when he will suffer a crime of facies," summarizes his lawyer, Maître Font, mentioning a medical certificate attesting to edema on the left side of the face. "If there had been no racial profiling at the beginning, would we be here tonight?" he argues. "There are elements that explain that what Jamal did is a reaction. An inadequate, violent reaction that deserves punishment. But the requisitions, in my opinion, correspond to an aggressor who is at the initiative of the conflict, "he insists.
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Today, I don't expect anything from Jamal, I expect something from Justice
Baptiste, whose biceps was sliced
Invited to speak, Baptiste, whose burgundy short-sleeved T-shirt reveals the splint that covers his entire arm, attacks with a calm voice: "I sometimes have the impression that I should rather be there [in the box] and Jamal here [on the witness stand], when I hear certain words." Today, I do not expect anything from Jamal, I expect something from Justice", resumes the one who recalls having "almost died for free". "From what I hear, it's more me who acts as an aggressor than the other way around," he laments. According to one of his friends interviewed that evening, the two young individuals tried to make their pockets. Another point of contention highlighted in court: the will to kill. Baptiste guarantees to have been targeted at the level of the chest and that he put his arm to protect himself. A version disputed by the defense.
"Everyone in this case, apart from a security guard, says that you repeatedly uttered the term that you were going to 'crash/kill someone that night'. Everyone is lying?" asks Maître Toussaint, Baptiste's lawyer, to Jamal. "That's not true, I never said that," replied the respondent. "Is everyone lying?" The speaker resumed. "Yes, indeed." "Why are they all lying?" "They had to agree among themselves." "Mr. G. [outside witness interviewed] has never met Baptiste or his friends. He said you kept saying you were going to plant them all. He is also lying?" he adds, to highlight the inconsistencies in the defendant's account. "I don't remember saying that." The lawyer also reminds the man who describes himself as non-violent that he had threatened a night watchman at a home in 2018.
Maître Font, for his part, praises the merits of his client whom he knew two years ago in Carcassonne: "I was stunned when one of my colleagues called me to tell me that Jamal was involved in criminal proceedings. I was stunned by the type of accusation made against him, namely this accusation of violence." It describes a polite and cooperative young man, mirroring the positive comments highlighted in a judicial report by an educational team. "It was an example that we took in Carcassonne," he recalls, rejoicing at the idea of seeing a "Carcassonne coal miner [drug dealer]" transformed into a "future welder from Nantes".
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A highly political trial
Behind these two irreconcilable versions was played out in filigree a political battle around insecurity. From the beginning, Mr. Toussaint had asked, in vain, that this case be referred to the Assize Court for attempted murder "as it could be in any other city of France where the assize courts are not overloaded". A request rather poorly received by the public prosecutor, and even more by the defense, which from the outset, saw "political considerations on a form of laxity of justice".
At the bar, Baptiste was also questioned by Me Font about his remarks invoked in an interview given to Le Figaro on April 27. "What did you mean by these words?" he asked her about this verbatim: "I think we should rather fight for our city to become better than leave it because we are afraid. If I left her, I would leave the field to them. I was born here, I was educated in Nantes, I have a Nantes culture, here, it's my home and it will be until I decide. It's not them, who have no ties and could do that in any city, who are going to make me leave my home." A reflection that made Me Toussaint come out of his hinges. His client, however, responded calmly. "I think your question is turned to enter into a political debate. I will not make that mistake because you want to take my words out of context. You quote three lines from an interview that is two pages long. What I mean is that there are not enough resources in big cities to manage insecurity and I think the solution is not that we stop going out to make room for that, but rather to set up businesses as I try to do, and to live together so that things go well. "
During his oral argument, Mr. Font also returned to this article "which is not totally trivial". "I am convinced that this young man was initially assaulted simply because he was assimilated to a form of delinquency in Nantes. I will end with this: why does he acquire this knife? He acquires this knife because he is told the idea that Nantes is a cutthroat. Why is it being dealt a blow in the first place? Because it is equated with this form of delinquency. I believe that we can still make society together despite some of our differences. And I believe that if everyone gets rid of their preconceived ideas about delinquency and insecurity, we can avoid such tragedies in the future." Jamal is no longer allowed to contact the victim and will also have to compensate him.
*On April 25, 2023, Baptiste had agreed to testify in our columns anonymously, with the assumed name Brice. As the hearing was public, we decided to publish his real name.
