Document: A day that changed my life. Violent death of Malik Oussekine, Paris, December 6, 1986

Abstract

On December 6, 1986, during my dad's 58th birthday,1 I find myself washing dishes in the house I rent with four friends in a small town in the woods near Frankfurt.
I turn on the radio so as not to get bored and listen to the news of the death of Malik Oussekine, a 22-year-old university student (born the same as me in 1964), who had been brutally beaten and trampled by three police officers from the feared "peloton de voltigeurs motocyclistes" – commonly known as "voltigeurs" –, police officers mounted in pairs on high-powered motorcycles: the one in front drives and the one behind hits with his elongated baton from the moving motorcycle