“Why so much hatred and savagery?” The unpublished testimony of relatives of the forgotten victims of the 2005 riots

“Five years in prison is a cheap price for a man’s life.” 26 years later, Nicole has not recovered from the murder of her husband. And the lightness, in his eyes, of the sentence received by the assassin. Sitting in the middle of her tiny living room, the octogenarian recounts, minute by minute, the last moments of Jean-Jacques Le Chenadec. “Around 9 p.m., they called me for my husband to come down because there were trash fires. Later I was told to come down too. And that’s where I see the SAMU. I ask to see my husband and I am told: "No, you won't see him now. Here are his clothes." And it stops there.” Plunged into a coma, Jean-Jacques Le Chenadec will not wake up. Hit in the face, he succumbed to a fall in front of the entrance to his building on Avenue Maxime Gorki in Stains, in Seine-Saint-Denis. His murderer: a neighbor. Protected for several years by the silence of a neighborhood which was the scene of the riots of 2005.

Jean-Jacques Le Chenadec is one of the forgotten victims of these events which shook France and its suburbs from October 27 to November 17, 2005, following the death of two teenagers Zyed and Bounya who were fleeing a police check. Although mentioned in several media at the time, this event was largely forgotten. Particularly in the stories and analyzes of these events. Except by Alexandre Devecchio, editor-in-chief of the debates and opinions pages of Le Figaro and Le Figaro Vox and a child of Seine-Saint-Denis.

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In, “We lived face to face” (Robert Laffont), an autobiographical essay, he evokes the little-known fate of this retiree and two other figures: Jean-Claude Irvoas, killed on October 27, 2005 in Épinay-sur-Seine and Alain Lambert, victim of a fire caused by a molotov cocktail, in the courtyard of the Plaine de Neauphle high school in Trappes (Yvelines), on November 21 2005. With the help of Guillaume Poingt, journalist at the “Facts Miscellaneous” section of Le Figaro, he found the trace of their loved ones.

In front of the cameras and microphones of Figaro TV, they agreed to confide, at the scene of the drama, their memories, their testimonies and also their emotion. Wife, daughter, son, each returns in their own way to these broken and ignored destinies, the ordeal of trials and sometimes insults. Dignified and poignant testimonies. An unpublished document.