the fresco in tribute to the policeman Ahmed Merabet soiled once again

“Ahmed Merabet’s portrait stained again. I had just done it again”tweeted C215, one of the most recognized stencil artists on the world street art scene. The artist noticed black tags, Wednesday August 10, on his work in tribute to the policeman murdered by one of the Kouachi brothers during the January 2015 attacks.

The stencil colored blue, white and red, is located on an electrical box, at 62, boulevard Richard-Lenoir, in the XI^e district of Paris. It was a few meters away that Ahmed Merabet, on January 7, 2015, died. Just alerted by the killing that took place in the premises of Charlie Hebdo, the policeman was looking for the two terrorists, on the central reservation of the boulevard. When he crosses them, he wipes a burst of Kalashnikov. Wounded, he lies on the sidewalk. The Kouachi brothers approach and shoot him in the head at close range. Ahmed Merabet is the twelfth victim of terrorists that day.

Despite his anger at the new act of vandalism suffered by his tribute to Ahmed Merabet, the street artist has already promised to “do it again if it is not possible to clean”, regretting having already done it again “I don’t know how many times”.

A few months ago, on November 10, a racist inscription was discovered on Ahmed Merabet’s forehead. An investigation was opened for “degradation of property intended for the public utility” and “public insult of a racist nature”. “This type of putrid remark on the freshly restored portrait of Ahmed Merabet, at the very site of his assassination, shows the climate which currently reigns in France, that of uninhibited racism. I’m going to delete…“, then reacted Christian Guémy, alias C215, on his Instagram account.

In July 2020, this time it was the official plaque deposited in memory of Ahmed Merabet which had been vandalized. “The terrorists are them”, had been written in marker where the names of the eleven victims of the massacre of Charlie Hebdo and that of Ahmed Merabet.