Hedi affair: video surveillance images contradict the version of certain police officers

2023-10-02 22:24:16

This is a revelation that is likely to cause a lot of noise. On Monday, our colleagues from Mediapart have revealed on their website previously unpublished video surveillance images of the night when Hedi was the target of an LBD shot and then of violence by several police officers, in Marseille (Bouches-du-Rhône).

Since July, and a few days after the urban violence which affected the entire country following the death of young Nahel in Nanterre (Hauts-de-Seine) by police shooting, Hedi accuses four police officers of having beaten him after being shot in the head with an LBD. The 22-year-old had to undergo an operation following this violence and lost part of his skull.

Four police officers were indicted at the end of July. One of them, the perpetrator of the LBD shooting of Hedi, had been in pre-trial detention for 40 days, which had provoked the anger of the police and led to several protest movements in Provencal police stations. He was released on September 2. Among the three other police officers accused of violence against the young man, only one of them had admitted the facts… while minimizing them.

The blows, denied by the police, clearly visible in the images

But this Monday, the matter perhaps takes another turn. Mediapart published the video surveillance images which allowed the indictment of the four police officers. We first see Hedi and a friend, together in the streets of Marseille, coming across three BAC police officers. The two young men run off once they get close to the police officers. Hedi would have told the IGPN “to have been afraid” of them, according to Mediapart.

Then comes the LBD shot. Although the images are not of very good quality, we can still see Hedi’s shadow falling to the ground after another police officer shoots in his direction with the weapon in question. Picked up by a police officer, he is then brought to the corner of the street, under the eyes of his colleagues and the commander of this unit.

In these images, much clearer than the previous ones, we can clearly see a police officer hitting Hedi with a brush to put him on the ground. Then, several violent blows were given to the young man, hit a few minutes earlier by an LBD shot. We also hear one of the police officers calling Hedi “an asshole”.

The investigation opened by the Marseille prosecutor’s office must still determine the legitimacy of the LBD shooting and the involvement of the BAC commander present that evening, as Mediapart recalls. Contacted by Le Parisien, Hedi’s lawyer Jacques Preziosi, after having read the Mediapart video, “does not see how the commander can escape indictment”. He specifies that the images to which he had access during the procedure were of much poorer quality than those broadcast by Mediapart.