The ‘other’ French Muslims: Death throws light on a forgotten army
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Version 0 of 1. Yazid was part of a forgotten army of tens of thousands of inhabitants of the infamous banlieues who make everyday life in well-heeled Paris pleasant or even possible. They are office cleaners, street sweepers and deliverymen; chamber-maids, dish-washers, security guards and shop assistants. Most of them come from immigrant backgrounds. Many are Muslims. Yazid, 40, would leave his home in the western suburbs every morning in the small hours. He had just been promoted to the position of foreman in a delivery firm which supplied bars and restaurants in Paris with freshly baked bread and patisseries. He also had a second delivery job in the afternoons to provide extra cash for his family, a wife, two daughters aged 11 and nine and a son of seven. Yazid was, in other words, an example of “another” Muslim France – hard-working, law-abiding, family-loving – which rarely makes the headlines. The Banlieue Skyline On Thursday morning soon after 4am, he was delivering bread, as usual, on the Boulevard de Sébastopol in northern Paris, close to the Gare du Nord. A car drove through a red light at high speed and collided with his van. Yazid was thrown on to the street and killed. That speeding vehicle was a police car, its two occupants both off-duty detectives. They had been to a party and, according to police sources, the driver, a detective sergeant in an anti-drugs squad, had drunk four times the permitted level of alcohol. His companion, a lieutenant, had also been drinking heavily, the police sources said. Eyewitnesses told police the marked police car sped through several red lights before the crash. Both occupants were in custody yesterday. It was the latest in a series of disturbing incidents involving police detectives in the Paris area in the past 18 months – including the alleged rape of a Canadian tourist and the theft, and re-sale, of cocaine from a store of seized narcotics – and has shocked France. But, four months after the jihadist attacks in Paris which killed 17, the death of Yazid has also triggered a debate in social media. Many tweeted or placed messages on news websites reading “Je suis Yazid” – a reference to the slogan which swept the world after the attack at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on 7 January. Other anonymous message-posters suggest that too much is being made of a sad but ultimately banal incident. “No one would be talking about this if the road hog had not been a policeman and the victim from an immigrant background,” wrote “Rotot” on the website of the newspaper 20 Minutes. The council of Muslim organisations in France, contacted by The Independent, declined to comment on the record. “It is a very sad and disturbing event and this poor man and his family should be remembered as far more typical of the French Muslim community than jihadis and radicals,” an official said. Yazid’s wife, interviewed on the BFMTV news channel without showing her face or giving her name, said: “My husband was my father, my brother. He was everything for me. I don’t know what I will do without him. I cannot live without my husband.” She said that he worked so hard on his two jobs that his children had not seen him for a week. “The police are supposed to protect us, not take our lives,” she said. “Prison is not enough for them. Even if they spend years and years there, they will come out one day. My husband will never come back.” Her sister said: “He was a very helpful man, always ready to do you a favour, always very gentle … I can’t tell you what state we are in and how we are going to tell his children.” |