The policeman accused of having killed the young Nahel after a refusal to comply in Nanterre probably did not expect such enthusiasm. And yet, the support kitty, opened on the initiative of the ex-zemmourist Jean Messiha, is close to one and a half million euros in donations at the start of the week. By way of comparison, the one intended for the family of Nahel has just painfully crossed 350,000 euros.
What arouse the ire of a large part of the left, which cries “provocation”. This is the case of the coordinator of La France Insoumise, Manuel Bompard, who said he was “scandalized” this Tuesday, July 4 on France Info. “We must not forget that a week ago, a young man was killed”, and that a “family” is “mourning”, breathes the mélenchoniste. The day before, already, his colleague Clémence Guetté had been indignant at this exponential progression, described as “indecency and absolute horror”.
On Sunday, the boss of the Insoumis deputies, Mathilde Panot, had ordered from her Twitter account that the kitty be “deleted immediately”. And to recall that in 2019, a similar initiative “for the yellow vest boxer Christophe Dettinger” had been “closed in less than 48 hours”, in accordance with the request expressed in particular by members of the government. “We have closed it insofar as it supports an act that is at least criminal”, had justified Marlène Schiappa at the time.
This position is shared within Nupes, in particular by socialists and ecologists. The boss of the PS, Olivier Faure, thus called on GoFundMe – the site which hosts the sum collected – to close “the kitty of shame”. As for the EELV deputy of the Rhône, Marie-Charlotte Garin, she also believes that it is the responsibility of the platform to ban it, because “by allowing this, it rewards a crime”.
Less virulent, the national secretary of the PCF Fabien Roussel sees in it all the same “a shift in society which today comes to feed a pot of more than one million euros for a police officer who is placed in detention for a voluntary homicide.”
On the right, the boss of the LR deputies, Olivier Marleix, said he was “uncomfortable” with the importance taken by these various pots in the political debate. “It is not for digital platforms to replace justice”, warns the deputy for Eure-et-Loir. The parliamentarian insists on the need to properly measure the “anecdotal” nature of these collections of money in the face of the “savagery experienced in the country” during all these days of violence. This, while the president of the Republicans, Éric Ciotti judged that a kitty intended to support the family of a policeman in difficulty was neither “shocking” nor “contrary” to his principles.
A slightly different tone from the nationalists, who were not particularly verbose on the subject. Asked about RFI on Tuesday, RN deputy Jean-Philippe Tanguy tried to provide an explanation for the popular success of the initiative: “Beyond the police officer implicated in the Nahel affair, it is support from the hearts of French towards their forces of order.
At the end of a meeting with all the parliamentary groups, Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne insisted that only justice was competent to rule on the legality of this kitty. “The fact that it is indeed a person close to the extreme right who launched this kitty does not undoubtedly contribute to bringing appeasement”, however judged the head of government.
