Sadly electoral tribute
Brahim Bouraam victim but not of fascism!
The candidate of "En Marche!", Emmanuel Macron today paid tribute to Brahim Bouarram, a young Moroccan killed on the sidelines of an FN parade in 1995. Philippe Bilger, general counsel in the trial of Michaël Freminet sentenced for the murder of Brahim Bouarram in 1998 sees it as an electoral approach.
How naive I am!
I never imagined that the run-off campaign would be so violent, vindictive and extremist in form from both candidates. Emmanuel Macron replying to the FN speaks of his "insults" and his "obscenity" and Marine Le Pen was not left out in his speech at Villepinte.
Our probable future President of the Republic paid tribute, on the morning of May 1, to Brahim Bouarram who died on May 1, 1995 after being thrown into the Seine by a skinhead Mickaël Freminet.
The trial of the latter and three co-defendants was held in May 1998. As Advocate General, I requested against Freminet, the only culprit of the crime of murder with which he was charged, a sentence of 10 to 12 years criminal imprisonment. He was sentenced on May 14 by the Assize Court to 8 years in prison.
Emmanuel Macron, with his pilgrimage, continues to exploit the past of the FN to tear down its present and deny it a presidential future.
I would not have wanted to come back to this unfortunate affair if it had not been politically exploited from the outset and if it was not distorted in the media every year. I saw it again for the audiovisual this May 1st..
François Mitterrand, then president, was the first to take the initiative for this tribute, which in essence meant that the FN was responsible for the death of Brahim Bouarram.
We shuddered at the idea of a political trial but immediately in the box we could only see the presence of a Freminet, to speak only of him, lost, lost, of a simplicity of spirit obvious, and who had come with three other skinhead friends hanging out on May 1 at the tail of the traditional FN parade led by Jean-Marie Le Pen
Following a scuffle, an altercation opposed Brahim Bouarram to Freminet and the latter pushed the former into the Seine, unaware that he could not swim. Bouarram could not be rescued and was not held against Freminet's co-defendants for the offense of non-assistance to a person in danger.
I admit on this occasion a weakness, a lack of courage. Instead of maintaining that it was a crime of mortal blows without intention to cause death, which would have been the right qualification, less serious - Freminet knowing nothing of Bouarram's inability to swim -, to submit myself in somehow to political and media pressure – even though the debates had deflated everything – I maintained that there was murder and I was followed. But the punishment was fair and appropriately measured.
It is surprising to note that since 1995 and especially after the 1998 trial, the media have continued to broadcast the same errors, evoking an assassination and fantasizing about the ideological nature of the crime. At no time did they have the curiosity to find out. They took at face value what Mitterrand wanted to convey and which had nothing to do with reality: not a political crime but an imbecile act committed by a "cretin" and having had a dramatic consequence that he did not had not wanted.
This does not make the death of Brahim Bouarram less worthy of compassion, but he is not the missing hero of a cause that deliberately targeted him. To believe that for politicians and the media, fantasized History should above all never be revised downwards.
Philippe Bilger is president of the Institut de la parole. He served for more than twenty years as Advocate General at the Court of Assizes of Paris, and is now an honorary magistrate. He is the author of France in pieces (Fayard editions). He is also the author of Order and Disorder (Editions Le Passeur, April 2015).
