“I write with a shovel“explains Philippe Artières. Not so much to search for treasure, to find the gold of words or the gold of time, as to unearth a corpse. That of Mohamed Diab, a truck driver killed in Versailles a burst from a machine pistol, on November 29, 1972, at the Noailles police station, the famous “19“. The mentally ill Algerian worker had caused a scene in hospital at the bedside of his dying mother.

The sub-brigadier who pulled the trigger claimed self-defence. The testimony of the victim’s sister and widow, who were present at the time of the incident, was persuasive. Gisèle Halimi to defend the civil parties. However, the Criminal Court, the Court of Appeal and the Indictment Division each acquitted sub-brigadier Robert Marquet.

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Philippe Artières was 4 years old at the time of the shooting and lived in Versailles. Like Mohamed Diab, but not in the same neighborhood. When he…