A 22-year-old Marseillais, Hedi, victim of an LBD shot in the head and beaten on the night of July 1 to 2, testified to his ordeal.
[Updated July 27, 2023 at 8:43 p.m.] A damning testimony. Hit by an LBD shot in Marseille then violently beaten by police on the night of July 1 to 2, Hedi, 21, is now disfigured. Four police officers from the Marseille anti-crime brigade (BAC) were indicted for violence in meetings for these facts. One of them was remanded in custody, sparking outrage among his police colleagues. Wednesday July 26, the young man spoke about his trauma in an interview broadcast by Konbini. “Sometimes I think I’m going to wake up, but in fact I always wake up with a deformed head,” says Hedi, his skull scarred by the violence he suffered.
More than 50 staples were needed to consolidate the head of this young man who was shot by a Flash Ball on the night of July 1 to 2 in Marseille. Doctors had to remove part of his skull to keep him alive. His jaw was also broken, he also suffered severe head trauma, and his left eye is no longer fully functional.
What happened ? Hedi says, after helping his parents in Meyrargues, joins a friend, Lilian, to find their respective girlfriends in Marseille. On the spot, the situation is very chaotic, the city is affected by very violent riots following the death of Nahel in Nanterre. “There was a helicopter, we had the idea of ??following it, which was not very smart. But hey, a helicopter flying over the sky in Marseille in such chaos, we don’t see all the days,” said the young man in La Provence. They therefore walk the streets of the city center which are then plunged into darkness. A few steps from Cours Lieutaud, the two friends meet agents from the BAC: “we said good evening to them, but we quickly understood that they were upset and closed to discussion.”
Hedi’s life changes at that moment. If his friend Lilian managed to escape, explains to him that he was shot in the head by LBD before being dragged on the ground for about ten meters “in a corner where it is completely dark”. He continues his story: “Then they started beating me. Some were lying on top of me so I couldn’t move. Some hit me with their fists, others with truncheons.” The beating would have lasted for five minutes according to Hedi, “I was shouting saying that I was nice, that I had my papers, that they could search me to see that I had nothing dangerous on me. But they didn’t didn’t want to stop.”
He would then have been left on the ground and then the young man managed to get up. “When I wanted to touch my head, I didn’t feel my skull. I must have had Flash-Ball residue I imagine.” He ends up finding Lilian in front of a convenience store, but the young man “starts to lose control of his body”. The store managers drive him to the emergency room where he falls into a coma. Mediapart affirmed that his vital prognosis had been engaged. Hedi said doctors told him they “operated on a dead man.”
According to information from BFMTV, the IGPN investigators allegedly said that “no police officer wishes to collaborate in the investigation, even going so far as to have difficulty identifying themselves on the videos”. The official remanded in custody, the only one to have an LBD on the CCTV images, said he “remembered nothing, saw nothing and did not recognize himself in the images”. Two agents “ended up, during their police custody, by recognizing violence”. In addition, the news channel revealed that “if these police officers are identified thanks to their clothing on the video surveillance images of the city, the head of the BAC did not report any incident in her report to her hierarchy that night. there, nor any use of an LBD.”
In testimony given to Konbini, Hedi said he “lost almost 10 pounds.” “Sometimes I think I’m going to wake up, but in fact, I always wake up with a deformed head.” He said he “looked at himself once in the hospital, out of curiosity. But it was too much… When you see a metallic line of 65 staples on your head, it’s super hard to bear.” He doesn’t yet know if he will ever be able to return to his original head shape and still hasn’t regained sight in his left eye. His injuries weakened his body: “I often have to stay in the dark, with no sound and no light, because I have migraines that don’t stop.” The 22-year-old has to wear a helmet every day to protect his head.
“Why me?” asked Hedi. This management assistant in the hotel and catering industry told Mediapart of the feeling of seeing a “problem in the police”. “When there are one or two, OK. But when on a team of four or five, you see that they are all rotten, it’s serious. It means that it’s clear and assumed.” He specified that no member of the government had come into contact with him. He hoped “not to hold a reluctance about it”. Faced with the testimony of this man, Olivier Véran, spokesperson for the government, indicated on BFMTV that he “is not the person who must do justice” to explain the position of the executive.
