Sunday May 10, a white march brought together around a hundred people in the city center of Marseille to demand “justice pour Mehdi“. Mehdi L., 26, was shot dead on April 23, 2026 by municipal police officers whom the young man allegedly threatened with a knife.
Since then, the family of the deceased, who had denounced “a sham investigation”, filed a complaint and a judicial investigation was opened by the Marseille prosecutor’s office. “There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that justifies shooting three bullets into the body of a 26-year-old young man.“, insists the family’s lawyer, Me Nicolas Chambardon, during the white march.
But in the state of the investigations, entrusted to the territorial crime division (DCT) of the national police, it is still the theory of self-defense which predominates. Given the consistency of the explanations of the municipal police officers, heard during the night following the events, the prosecution did not consider it necessary to place them in police custody. “The statements of the agents, those of outside witnesses – there are several – and the findings at the crime scene completely converge“, slips a source close to the matter.
