World Cup Qatar 2022
The family of the 14-year-old boy run over in Montpellier calls for “calm” to avoid further incidents
The celebrations in Montpellier for France’s pass to the World Cup final in Qatar ended in tragedy. Aymen, a 14-year-old teenager of Moroccan origin, was fatally hit by a car on Wednesday after the France-Morocco match. The driver went on the run and is being sought by the French police. After Aymen’s death, his family appealed for calm on Thursday, thanked the innumerable messages of condolence and asked the press to respect his mourning and his privacy.
“We call for the greatest calm and we express our confidence in the institutions of the Republic, the police and justice, so that the perpetrator of the events is arrested and tried,” said Aymen’s family, fearful that the possible protests that could due to the death of this adolescent translate into violent incidents.
Aymen’s deadly accident took place around 10:30 p.m. in La Paillade, a troubled neighborhood of 20,000 inhabitants northeast of Montpellier where many immigrants live. According to videos broadcast on social networks, a group of about fifteen people, including Aymen, surrounded a white Citroen C4. One of them tore off a French flag that was tied to the driver’s rear window. Finding itself surrounded, the car immediately started, turned around, struck Aymen and another person, and quickly fled the scene.
The vehicle was located near the scene of the accident. The police have opened an investigation to determine the causes of the accident and find the driver of the vehicle, who has not yet been arrested.
Seriously injured, Aymen was immediately taken to hospital, where he died shortly after admission, the Hérault prefecture reported in a statement. The vehicle was found near the crash site. The police have opened an investigation to determine the causes of the incident and find the driver of the car, who had not yet been arrested on Thursday night.
The French government had planned a strong security device by the France-Morocco party fearing that it could record incidents, whoever won. Some 10,000 police and gendarmes were mobilized across France, including 5,000 in the Paris region, to prevent public order incidents and fight crime.
Despite this important police deployment, incidents were recorded in Amiens, Lille, Nice, Toulouse, Avignon and Paris, among other cities, according to the newspaper ‘Le Figaro’. Police arrested 266 people across France, including 167 in and around Paris.
Among the detainees there is a group of about 40 people, close to far-right groups, who were arrested in Paris for carrying prohibited weapons. They were trying to access the avenue des Champs-Élysées, where the French and Moroccan fans had gathered after the first semifinal of the World Cup.
Left-wing deputies denounced that extreme right-wing groups carried out “violent raids” against fans of the Moroccan team in Lyon and Nice after the game. In Nice, for example, hooded men chased Moroccan fans through the streets chanting “Arabs out” and “We are home.”
After what happened, Mathilde Panot, leader of the deputies of the leftist La France Insoumise party, in the National Assembly, was “very concerned” that far-right groups act in France “with total impunity.”
