“Nahel, Adama, Zyed, Bouna”: a monument to the dead tagged before the passage of the Tour de France

2023-07-09 17:54:00

“Nahel”, “neither forgetting nor forgiveness”… A war memorial was covered with inscriptions on the night of Saturday to Sunday referring to the death of Nahel, on the eve of the passage of the Tour de France in Gentioux-Pigerolles (Hollow), bring back The mountain.

In addition to the name of the 17-year-old young man, killed by a policeman in Nanterre (Hauts-de-Seine) in June, one could also read there those of Zyed Benna and Bouna Traoré, the two teenagers whose death had triggered the riots in 2005 in the suburbs, and Adama Traoré, who also became a symbol of police violence after his death in a Val-d’Oise police station in 2016.

“Scandalous”

These registrations had partly been cleaned at the end of the morning, indicates La Montagne, while the ninth stage of the Tour de France crossed Gentioux this Sunday afternoon. The rest must be removed “in the coming weeks”, said Benjamin Simons, the mayor of the town, welcoming “the very rapid intervention of the services of the Department to remedy the situation in record time”.

Other tags were found in particular on the gendarmerie and on the road crossed by the runners of the Tour, according to La Montagne. The mayor of the town plans to file a complaint, and an investigation has already been opened by the gendarmerie, also reports France 3 New Aquitaine.

The #Prefect23 strongly condemns the damage that was committed last night to the Gentioux-Pigerolles war memorial.
It is scandalous (and criminally reprehensible) to sully the memory of those who died for France. pic.twitter.com/PQFfQRUGnQ

– Prefect of the Creuse (@Prefet23) July 9, 2023

Several elected officials and local personalities were moved by these degradations on social networks. Anne Frackowiak-Jacobs, the prefect of Creuse, “strongly condemns the damage that was committed last night on the war memorial of Gentioux-Pigerolles”, she wrote on Twitter, considering “scandalous (and criminally reprehensible) to sully the memory of those who died for France”.

Étienne Lejeune, the mayor of the neighboring town of La Souterraine also expressed his “sadness”, and called the incident “absolute shame” on his Facebook page. “Shame and anger at this unacceptable desecration”, also commented the president of the agglomeration of Grand Guéret – which brings together 25 municipalities of Creuse -, Éric Correia.