“Bilal had stopped paying his rent; it’s inconceivable that someone could end up killed for that”: interview with Matteo Bonaglia, lawyer

On June 23, 2021, Bilal M. was killed in his apartment by a bullet fired by a police officer who was carrying out his eviction. Since then, Bilal’s family has been fighting to get answers and for justice to be served. By their side is Matteo Bonaglia, a committed lawyer specializing in criminal law, housing rights, and fundamental freedoms. In this interview, he discusses the flaws in the judicial procedure surrounding this case — on which INDEX published a detailed counter-investigation. His remarks also shed light on the context in which Bilal M.’s death occurred: rental evictions and the housing rights crisis in France.

INDEX: Bilal M. was killed by a bullet in the back, fired by one of the four police officers who were mobilized that day to carry out his eviction. The shooting occurred within minutes after the police entered the apartment. What happened next?

Matteo Bonaglia (MB): The first surprising thing about this case is how the facts were handled. The first people to arrive on the scene were not IGPN (ed. the acronym of the French police watchdog authority), investigators but three police officers of higher rank: the general commissioner and director of public security of Val-D’Oise, the commissioner of the Cergy-Pontoise area, and the commissioner of Cergy. The three police officers implicated in Bilal’s death were not isolated but instead remained in contact with each other. The IGPN only arrived on site at 12:05 pm. For more than two hours, the officers and their superiors had the opportunity to converse freely without any measures intended to prevent coordination.

Even when the IGPN arrived, its investigators conducted only light checks, instructing the involved officers to present themselves later that afternoon at the IGPN’s Paris headquarters for questioning. So, in front of a homicide scene, there was no arrest, no custody: the officers were summoned for voluntary interviews and were only heard at 3:10 pm. Meanwhile, they had the opportunity to talk again or even coordinate. As a lawyer, I find striking this difference in treatment between a police officer implicated in the death of a man, compared to what would be reserved for any other French citizen suspected of causing another person’s death. Anyone else would have been immediately arrested, separated from other suspects, and interrogated under custody to prevent any collusion, thus favoring the uncovering of the truth.

INDEX: On the very afternoon of Bilal’s death, the police were questioned at the IGPN premises, where a “re-enactment” was carried out. The officers acted out their version of events together while investigators took photographic evidence, which was added to the case file. How do you interpret this re-enactment from a legal perspective?

MB: I had never seen anything like it. A proper re-enactment is codified in judicial practice: all parties are present, it is conducted under the direction of a magistrate, involved parties present their versions, experts are present to give opinions and identify contradictions. But this re-enactment at the IGPN headquarters was in a context much more favorable to the police officers, with no measures to prevent them from coordinating. In this IGPN re-enactment, the officer who shot Bilal, Guillaume R., claimed to have fired straight ahead while Bilal was standing facing the officers. However, the autopsy established that the bullet trajectory through Bilal’s chest was downward, and Bilal was 1.86 m tall. It is therefore impossible that he was standing in front of the officer at the time of the shot, as your counter-investigation clearly shows. In a proper re-enactment, we would have had the chance to question these inconsistencies. That was not possible here.

The statements and photos from this re-enactment were given to a ballistics expert, who concluded that the officers’ declarations were “not manifestly incompatible” with the objective evidence. This re-enactment had important consequences because the expert’s conclusion heavily influenced the prosecutor’s decision to close the case without further action. If the IGPN had simply collected the officers’ statements properly instead of conducting this re-enactment, perhaps the expert would have come to other conclusions and a judicial investigation would have been opened, allowing an investigating judge to take over and order a real re-enactment.

INDEX: The Pontoise public prosecutor initially closed the case in February 2022. At the same time, you filed a complaint for “voluntary homicide” and “voluntary violence committed with a weapon by persons vested with public authority causing death without intent to kill”. Two years later, INDEX published its investigation into Bilal’s death, and according to our information, it was only after this publication that the civil party — Bilal’s older brother — was heard by the investigating judge, which is the first act in this kind of judicial inquiry. For two years, the judicial institution did not move on this case. How do you explain this delay?

MB: One answer surely lies in the professional status of the protagonists, who are police officers. It is likely that any other person in a similar situation would have been treated differently by the judiciary. There would have been an immediate investigation, possibly with detention or custody. Whereas the officers involved, including the one who shot Bilal, continue to work as police officers. They are presumed innocent, and I am not here to judge their guilt at this stage. That’s not the question. But I regret that this case did not receive the procedural attention that Bilal’s family could legitimately expect.

Then there is the lack of resources at the Pontoise court, where there are too few investigating magistrates, each handling hundreds of cases annually with very limited means. Among this flood of cases to “manage,” cases involving police officers, especially those closed by the prosecutor’s office, are probably not considered a priority.

INDEX: In your opinion, did the fact that Bilal M. was a 34-year-old Arab man influence how the police intervened at his home, or affect the judicial process that followed his death?

MB: I have no evidence on that and do not want to make an accusation without grounds. However, the officer who fired the fatal shot repeatedly mentioned during his interviews that he heard “Arab music,” described as “strange,” like “religious chants.” In reality, Bilal listened to a lot of music and especially liked raï. He probably fell asleep with the music playing. It’s a detail but it might have influenced the first impression the officers had of Bilal, especially in today’s toxic political climate that sometimes unfairly links Islam with a propensity for violence… That said, I think all this comes really secondary in the judicial process, where it’s mainly the professional quality of the protagonists that led the prosecutor to close the case.

INDEX: Bilal’s death occurred in a particular context, that of a rental eviction. You have experience working on housing insecurity cases with organizations like Médecins du Monde, the Abbé Pierre Foundation, and Droit au Logement. Is it common for rental evictions to reach such a level of violence?

MB: I am not aware of other cases like this during evictions. But it remains an exercise of extreme violence, both physical and symbolic. Physically, if the evicted person still lives in the property, they and their belongings will be forcibly removed. Symbolically, it happens in front of everyone, sometimes with children in pajamas on the sidewalk at 6 a.m. Often, it happens without examining the persons’ situations, without prior assessment, or alternative housing offers. It’s a manifest failure of our society that vulnerable people are forcibly put back on the street.

Moreover, this is a civil infraction — a disturbance of enjoyment, a contractual damage. These are private law matters between landlord and tenant. When police intervene, the value protected is private property, which takes precedence over social bonds and protection of life. Meanwhile, police are absent when it comes to fighting exploitative landlords or rental scams. There should therefore be a greater duty of vigilance, proportionality, and care from police officers when it comes to such an extreme measure as eviction. Certainly, Bilal was behind on rent, but it’s inconceivable that someone could end up killed for that.

INDEX: What legislative changes regarding housing rights and evictions have there been in France in recent years? Has the “Kasbarian” law, named after the current junior housing minister and approved in June 2023, affected the use of public force during rental evictions?

MB: There have been two trends in French housing law in recent years. Upwards, toward owners and the privileged, there are fewer controls, more laissez-faire, and less obstacles to land speculation and rental income. Downwards, toward the dispossessed and poorly housed, regulations have become increasingly complex and bureaucratic, tightening repression and stigmatizing indebted households. The Kasbarian law perfectly illustrates this: on one side it facilitates and speeds up eviction procedures benefiting landlords, on the other it complicates the law, reduces protections, and adopts punitive measures against illegal occupancy.

Additionally, legislators are pushing a form of “dejudiciarization” of evictions. Previously, to evict someone from their home — whether formal or informal, with or without title — a judge’s authorization was required. There was a procedure respecting all parties’ interests, a contradictory debate, and the judge could grant a delay before eviction. This is now over for the vast majority living informally, without title. Now the public prosecutor or the prefect and their police intervene, without guarantees, without oversight, or only ex post facto, in conditions very hard for occupants to challenge. This is a transfer of competence from the judiciary to the prefectural and police authority. Increasingly, poverty and housing insecurity are dealt with not through justice, adversarial debate, and defense rights, but through administrative and judicial policing. This is a paradigm shift in how housing insecurity is handled today.

Added to these political and legislative trends was the Covid-19 crisis. During the epidemic, evictions were suspended for nearly a year. After the crisis, a backlog of eviction judgments built up, and prefectures massively called in police to catch up. Quantitatively, 2022 and 2023 saw an explosion in eviction numbers.

INDEX: Do you see a link between the simplification of eviction procedures, the increased use of public force during evictions, and Bilal’s death?

MB: What is representative is that there was no prior contact with Bilal before the eviction. I mean, no progressive measures: Bilal was not offered alternative housing, not even temporary, and no attempt was made to have him leave peacefully. When the police arrived, they did not try to establish dialogue. There was no prior visit to warn him. On the contrary, the officers were given information about Bilal’s potential dangerousness. There is therefore a chain of decisions that, taken together, led to Bilal’s death. And it would be incomplete, I think, to place sole responsibility on the involved police officers.

[Interview by INDEX on 15 May 2024].