When Bouana Traore’s death led to France’s 2005 riots
May 23, 2017
Siyakha Traore reflects on the day his 15-year-old brother, fearing lengthy interrogation, hid from police and died.
Siyakha Traore says his younger brother Bouna, whose death in 2005 led to an uprising, is always in his thoughts [Raymond Bobar/Al Jazeera]
Clichy-sous-Bois, France – On October 27, 2005, 15-year-old Bouna Traore, Zyed Benna and Muhittin Altun, both 17, were playing football with a group of friends.
It was Ramadan and the time to break fast was approaching in Clichy-sous-Bois, an isolated suburb 15 kilometres from Paris.
Police had been called to investigate a possible break-in at a construction site nearby.
A little after 5pm, when the boys playing football spotted the police patrol, they ran away, fearing lengthy interrogations.
Stop-and-searches are frequent in the “banlieues”. They are sometimes carried out more than once a day, often with aggression, and usually target non-white citizens and immigrants, according to several residents Al Jazeera spoke to in the impoverished suburbs.
Traore, Benna and Altun, of Mauritanian, Tunisian and Turkish Kurdish origin respectively, and known in the neighbourhood for their good behaviour, ran in the direction of a high-voltage electrical power substation, and hid in the transformer.
