Morocco plays the small final of the World Cup on Saturday afternoon, 17 December, but whatever the result, there will certainly be no partying in Mosson, where the inhabitants long for the tension of the last three days to subside. It was in this popular neighborhood northwest of Montpellier, where there are many French-Moroccans and most of them cheered on the Moroccan football team against France on Wednesday December 14, that the young man died. hit by a car after the match.
Regardless of the defeat, everyone had taken to the streets to meet at the usual assembly point. But the party turned into tragedy: twenty young people saw a French flag in the car and tried to take possession of it. The driver tried to extricate himself from the group, spun across the tram tracks. On the way, he mortally wounded the teenager. The carabinieri are actively looking for the driver who, for the moment, remains untraceable, even if the prefect wanted to denounce with a press release, Thursday at the end of the day, that “the investigation is progressing rapidly”.
For the following forty-eight hours, the neighborhood was plagued by violence between the youth of the Maghrebi community – over 90% of the neighborhood’s inhabitants, mainly Moroccan or Franco-Moroccan – and that of the nomads, the community to which the driver in escape would belong. The situation degenerated on Thursday: punitive expedition at the foot of the buildings where people of the nomadic community are found, rocking, broken windows, burnt rubbish bins, beatings of a young man from the community without his involvement in the incident being ascertained.
The call for calm by Saïd, Aymen’s brother
Calls for calm then arrived from everywhere, Thursday at the end of the day and Friday: the young man’s family, the imam during Friday prayers which brings together more than two thousand people, the gypsy community, the prefect, who received representatives of this community and announced a major law enforcement deployment in the neighborhood. The latter, who arrived on Friday, were still present during the night, which was quiet.
In the end, the voice that carried the most weight was probably that of Saïd, Aymen’s older brother, who first spoke at the invitation of the imam of the mosque, then addressed the young people, with a megaphone, to call them to calm when they wanted to meet on Friday. “I think it played a huge roleexplains a local resident. It was heard, which is good news in a neighborhood where today it is difficult to find words that young people would agree to hear. »
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