Moroccan Teen Sentenced to 3 Years for Killing Friend’s Brother in France

Amine Mahama was placed in pre-trial detention for this murder committed, four years earlier, on the older brother of his friend, Ibrahim Camara, whose family had welcomed him upon his arrival in France, when he was eight years old. "These are children who grew up on the same building landing, did ’the 400 blows’ together. Some were friends, others the ’big brothers’," reports Le Parisien.

This murder, which occurred on Sunday, July 26, 2016, quickly broke the ties between the two Camara and Mahama families, in the Écharde housing project in Compiègne, a sensitive working-class neighborhood, which appears to be one of the backdrops to this fateful summer Sunday, the same media specifies.

The two families rubbed shoulders despite themselves with a load of resentment and rivalries: "With Issa’s brother, we were friends. Our families were close. But with Issa, it was just hello, goodbye. We didn’t socialize, we weren’t the same age," the defendant argues. According to Dr. Prosper, who spoke with Amine the day after his incarceration, it was a latent conflict between these boys.

The day before the death, a dispute had broken out over a drug matter, the same source recalls. "It’s part of our daily life (drugs, editor’s note), the defendant confirms. It’s rooted in the neighborhood. We go out of our house and it’s there, in front of our eyes. I lived in this climate, it’s a vicious circle."

Amine will ultimately be sentenced by the Compiègne Criminal Court to three years in prison.