On May 31, a Saturday, Hichem Miraoui was at his home in southeastern France on a video call with his sister Hanen, who lives nearby, and his mother in Tunisia.It was late morning in Puget-sur-Argens, his village near the French Riviera.
Suddenly, Hanen heard him exclaim. The phone then dropped to the floor and the line went silent.
Two hours later, Mouna Miraoui, his cousin, was at the Draguignan police station a few kilometres north, identifying his body.
Miraoui had been shot five times and killed in what French investigators – in a first – are identifying as a possibly racially motivated act of domestic terrorism.
“It’s a living hell, it’s unbearable,” Mouna told Al Jazeera by phone. “It was a shock for everyone. His sister fainted. Imagine if that day I had been invited to his house for dinner or a drink. I have young kids, what would have happened then?”
French investigators have opened a terrorism investigation in the murder case in which another victim was injured. A man identified as Christophe Belgembe has been arrested. Advertisement
The suspect regularly reposted content from France’s far-right National Rally party. He has admitted to shooting Miraoui but pleaded not guilty to the racially motivated nature of the crime.
In several videos uploaded to Facebook, which have since been deleted, the suspect appeared to have …
