On Sunday, May 10, a white march brought together about a hundred people in the city center of Marseille to demand “justice for Mehdi.” Mehdi L., 26 years old, was shot on April 23, 2026 by municipal police officers whom the young man had 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 public prosecutor’s office. “There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that justifies shooting three bullets into the body of a 26-year-old young man,” insisted 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, the theory of legitimate self-defense still prevails. Faced with the coherence of the explanations of the municipal police officers, heard during the night following the incident, the prosecutor’s office did not find it necessary to place them in custody. “The statements of the agents, those of the external witnesses – there are several – and the observations at the crime scene all completely converge,” a source close to the case revealed.
