Samuel, a 43-year-old man who bears heavy consequences from this attack in 2021 in a migrant camp in Paris, remembers a man with a concealed face who hit him several times.
A violent past. Just hours after the attack on a Kurdish cultural center which killed three people last Friday on rue d’Enghien, in the 10th arrondissement of the capital, the prosecutor of the Republic of Paris, Laure Beccuau, detailed the course of the main suspect , a man named William M.
She had described an individual “already known to the judicial services”, in particular for the attack on a migrant camp located in Parc de Bercy, on December 8, 2021, where he is accused of having struck several individuals with a saber. He had been placed in pre-trial detention and released on December 12, only a few days before his new act.
“He hit me without talking to me”
BFMTV was able to find and speak with Samuel, a 43-year-old migrant from Eritrea, who had been injured by William M. This morning in December 2021, shortly before eight o’clock, he came out of his tent and saw nearby a man he did not know.
“I come out of my tent, I see someone three meters from my tent. When he sees me he starts doing sports like that (he mimics gestures, editor’s note). He came behind me, he typed without speaking,” he recalls.
The 40-year-old is injured in the flank. Stunned and shocked, he tries to understand the reasons for this attack.
“I turn around to look at who it is and why he hit me. His face was hidden. He gave me another blow, a second, in the leg,” he adds.
Samuel, as well as a second person also injured, had been transported to the hospital. On December 27, Mediapart revealed that the other migrants in the camp had been taken into custody for “organized gang violence” when they had just been attacked. They were released several hours later.
Psychological sequelae
Since this violent attack, Samuel says he has been the victim, in addition to physical injuries, of significant psychological injuries that hinder his daily life.
“My life has changed. I stay at home, I don’t live normally. I called three or four lawyers who did not agree to defend me”, he underlines, adding that he cannot to find work because of this situation.
The exile is still looking for a lawyer who could bring his voice to justice. Before the facts of the rue d’Enghien, the investigation had lasted for more than a year, a length of the procedure justified by the profile of the victims, according to a judicial source at BFMTV.
“Already it was necessary to contact the victims, who are migrants therefore more complex to contact and finally there is an important psychological component and therefore it was necessary to carry out expertise which takes time”, it is indicated.
William M. was remanded in custody and investigated for murder and attempted murder on the basis of the victims’ true or assumed membership of an alleged race, ethnicity, nation or religion, as well as for illegal acquisition and possession of category B firearms.
He was also sentenced on June 30 by the Bobigny court to one year in prison for violence, stabbing three people at his home in Livry-Gargan in February 2016.
