Four Tunisian lawyers, led by Me Mounir Ben Salha, filed a complaint in Marseille on Friday concerning the violent death of a Tunisian national. They denounce an “unjustified homicide” and announce their intention to subsequently grasp international justice.
During a telephone intervention on Jawhara FMMe Mounir Ben Salha indicated that the lawyer’s team is currently in Marseille to formalize the complaint. According to him, the victim, a Tunisian citizen, was in a state of great agitation after having undergone severe assault. “French police had a duty to protect him instead of leaving him exposed to a deadly danger,” he said.
Me Ben Salha described the act of murder of “unjustified and premeditated”, while evoking a climate of hatred targeting the Tunisian community in France. He argued that “the Tunisian diaspora is now faced with a campaign of stigmatization and racism rooted in old mentalities”. The lawyer also accused certain parts, in Tunisia as in France, of having tried to block the legal proceedings.
A case that takes on a diplomatic dimension
This lawyer’s initiative intervenes when the Tunisian Ministry of Foreign Affairs had summoned the temporary worker of the French Embassy in Tunis to express an official protest after the death of the Tunisian citizen. The ministry’s press release, tried to be “disturbing” by Ben Salha, sparked a broad debate in the French media, where certain newspapers interpreted the Tunisian reaction as a direct accusation towards the French police.
Overhead
- According to the French pressthe first elements of the investigation indicate that the victim, a man of Tunisian origin in his forties, died after a police intervention following violence in a district of Marseille. The French authorities evoke an “individual in violent crisis”, whose behavior represented a danger for others and for himself.
- On the Tunisian sidelawyers dispute this version, believing that the victim should have been controlled and protected, not exposed to a fatal outcome. They consider that the police have failed in their obligation to protect and point out a possible racist motivation.
- Diplomaticallythis PO affairUr would tend more bilateral relations, in a context where the migratory question and the safety of diasporas are already sensitive.
Towards international judicialization?
Tunisian lawyers say that after filing a complaint in France, an action before international jurisdictions will be envisaged if the case does not succeed. They insist on the need to “defend the dignity of Tunisian citizens all over the world”.
