Police shooting dead a young man in Marseille leaves certain aspects of the incident undisclosed
The Investigation into Souheil El Khalfaoui's Death: A Twisted Tale of Evidence Disappearance
The ongoing investigation into the 2021 police shooting death of Souheil El Khalfaoui, a young man in Marseille, has taken a bizarre turn as Judge Patrick De Firmas announced that crucial pieces of evidence in the case are, inexplicably, untraceable. Consequently, El Khalfaoui's family filed a complaint for tampering with seals.
In a revelatory letter sent on June 4 to the family's lawyer, and later made public by Mediapart and confirmed by AFP, it is stated that after extensive searches lasting several months, nine seals, including vital evidence such as a nearby Caisse d'Epargne bank agency's surveillance footage, the police officer's recorded testimony, and the bullet that killed El Khalfaoui, are nowhere to be found.
According to the documents, these crucial seals were removed from storage at the beginning of 2022 but have failed to return to the seal registry. The authorities accuse the prosecutor of having "voluntarily diverted" the nine seals, an allegation that the family vehemently supports.
The family and their lawyers accused the authorities of engaging in practices akin to corruption systems designed to obscure the truth about a police crime. Furthermore, during a government Q&A session, the Minister of Justice, Gerald Damanin, publicly vowed to uncover the truth and find the responsible parties.
El Khalfaoui was killed in August 2021 during a questionable police control in the Belle-de-Mai neighborhood, an incident his family disputes. A preliminary investigation was launched in 2022, but the case was inexplicably closed without further action before being reopened in 2022 following a complaint of voluntary homicide.
The first searches to find these seals took place in 2024, according to a report by the registry, two years after the investigation began. The case was then under the jurisdiction of prosecutor André Ribes, who decided to close it without further action before being replaced by Dominique Laurens. According to the report, Laurens had intended to retrieve the procedure as well as the nine seals, with nothing found after inquiring about their whereabouts.
The family filed a complaint against Laurens accusing her of having "voluntarily diverted" the nine seals. In response to the loss of these seals, the Marseille public prosecutor's office has opened an investigation but denied any intent to conceal. They estimate that this should not jeopardize the investigation, as each seal was subject to a written record, and the judge made a request for copies of four of the nine seals in her possession.
However, the family also mentioned that only two out of six CCTV files provided by the Caisse d'Epargne bank agency were sealed and found to be unreadable during a meeting with the family in February 2022. Although an investigation by the IGPN recovered three out of six files, the video of the fatal police shooting was not among them.
"As the pieces disappear, what's left in the end? The police's word," questions the father of the victim, Issam El Khalfaoui. "As time goes on, the truth starts to fade." The man's father is now demanding a reconstruction of his son's murder, which has never taken place: "I just want the truth."
- The mysterious disappearance of crucial evidence, including surveillance footage, testament records, and the bullet that killed Souheil El Khalfaoui, has led to accusations of corruption and the obstruction of justice in the ongoing investigation, all part of the wider discourse in the realm of politics and general-news.
- The family's lawyer received a letter stating that nine seals, containing evidence vital to the investigation into Souheil El Khalfaoui's death, have gone missing, sparking a crime-and-justice controversy, as the authorities are accused of tampering with the seals and engaging in practices designed to conceal the truth about a police crime.
