Police Shoot Undocumented Individual in Nice:
The Killing of Omar Elkhouli

On the night of June 14, 2022, Italian police flagged a refrigerated van carrying five undocumented individuals near Ventimiglia. The French police were notified and attempted to stop the vehicle at a checkpoint near Sospel.
The vehicle, driven by two smugglers, did not stop, causing French border police (PAF) to pick up the chase. The van passed another police checkpoint and again refused to obey orders to stop. At this time, four bullets were fired at the moving vehicle. The van made it to Nice, where it was abandoned by the drivers, leaving the five passengers locked in the refrigerated compartment. When police arrived and opened the van, one of the men, Omar Elkhouli, was discovered shot in the back of the head. According to another passenger, “Police officers were kicking (Elkhouli) to see if he reacted… It took them 15 minutes to take care of him.” Elkhouli was eventually taken to hospital, where he died due to injuries on June 15, 2022.

In response to this, Nice procureur Xavier Bonhomme announced on Twitter that two inquiries had been launched: the first to track down the alleged smugglers for not complying with police and facilitating the entry and circulation of aliens in irregular situations into France, and the second into the officer who fired his weapon at the van.

The inquiry into homicide was referred to l’Inspection Générale de la Police National (IGPN), as is customary in cases involving the use of arms by a police officer. Following the death of Elkhouli, the Mayor of Nice, Christian Estrosi, released a statement on Twitter in which he proclaimed, “Of course, I deplore the injuries caused… but they are the result of a criminal act that had to be stopped for the safety of our police and gendarmes and to avoid other tragedies.” The entirety of this statement can be found on Twitter @cestrosi.

Who was Omar Elkhouli?

Omar Elkhouli was 35-years-old and originally from Egypt. Contrary to early reporting on this case, he was not a migrant attempting to enter France from Italy. A comprehensive MediaPart investigation into Elkhouli established that he had been living without papers in Paris for 13 years. Elkhouli was highly involved in his community and regularly visited two elderly neighbors. Ibrahim, a friend of Elkhouli, described to MediaPart how “[Elkhouli] even had the keys to the apartment of one of them and her kids would call him for news of their mother.”

Based on accounts from his friends acquired through the Mediapart investigation, Elkhouli felt he had no chance of obtaining a residence permit in France. One of Elkhouli’s friends has been trying and failing to get an appointment with a French prefecture to renew a residence permit for three years, despite having more than 40 payslips from years of registered work. Elkhouli worked construction without a contract, and thus had no way to prove he had been living and working in France for over a decade. His only chance of obtaining a residence permit was by acquiring fake documents from Italy and appealing to the Italian prefecture. Elkhouli is not the only undocumented French resident who had to resort to obtaining forged papers.

Many migrants, unable to legally prove their eligibility for residence permits, seek out fake documents to support their residency requests. These false supporting documents are often acquired in Italy. Elkhouli was pursuing a residence permit to visit Egypt. Having spent thirteen years working and living in France, he wanted to see his friends and family again. Elkhouli went to Italy some days prior to June 14, 2022. He acquired false documents and an appointment with the Italian prefecture. At the time of his departure from Italy, Elkhouli’s request for a residence permit was being processed. He had planned to leave Italy on June 14, 2022, as he had to return to work. However, on the 14th, he discovered that there were no train routes that would be able to get him to Paris from Ventimiglia.

MediaPart reported that Elkhouli was approached by a smuggler who offered to help him cross into France in the back of a refrigerated van. Elkhouli was informed that he would need to pay 50 euros to the man who approached him with this offer and 200 euros more to the men driving the van across the border.

The Night of the Incident


At 00:05, Elkhouli and four other undocumented persons departed from Ventimiglia in the back of a refrigerated truck. After 15 minutes, Italian police began to pursue the vehicle, and the drivers accelerated to evade law enforcement, despite protestation from the passengers. French border police were notified of its presence as the van crossed into French territory. Yet, the van refused to stop at two police checkpoints, the first in Sospel and the second in Cantaron.

According to police accounts, the vehicle accelerated in their direction at this second checkpoint, prompting one officer to fire his weapon four times. One bullet pierced the front of the van at the level of the headlights, while a second bullet hit above the rear tire and entered the refrigerator compartment. Elkhouli was shot in the back of the head by this bullet. One of the other passengers stated in an interview with MediaPart, “we banged on the dividing wall screaming that one of us had a head injury, but [the smugglers] kept accelerating.”

The vehicle arrived in Nice at about 2 a.m., at which point the smugglers left the vehicle and fled the scene. Elkhouli and another passenger were brought to the hospital while the police took the other men to the police station. The second man brought to the hospital had his clothes taken and, upon being discharged, was brought to the police station in only his boxers; no new clothes were provided for him. MediaPart reported that the police interrogated these men, some of whom were in shock, for hours without giving them water or food. After the interrogation, the men were placed in a detention center and ordered to leave French territory.

The other passengers were allowed to leave the detention center on June 20, 2022, with the help of Zia Oloumi, a Nice lawyer. He fought to have them released due to their particular vulnerability and physiological state after witnessing the death of Elkhouli.

After being released, two of the men launched a complaint against the police officer who fired his weapon at the refrigerated vehicle. When MediaPart reported on this case in July, both official inquiries into this situation were open. The Menton Times contacted numerous journalists and a local activist group to ask for updates on this case, but currently, no new information is available.

An uptake in Police Violence

The shooting of Omar Elkhouli is just one of a string of recent cases of police violence in France. On Sept. 7, another fatal shooting occurred in Nice. The victim was a 24-year-old Tunisian man, who police allege was driving a stolen vehicle and refusing to obey an order to stop.

A video circulating on social media shows an officer firing his gun towards the car’s windshield as it backs away from him. On the same day, a 22-year-old woman was fatally shot by Police in Rennes during an anti-drug operation. A report from the IGPN published in 2021 found that the frequency of officers “firing at vehicles in motion” has increased from an average of 119.2 instances annually from 2012-2016 to an average of 165.8 from 2017-2021. This is a statistically significant increase of approximately 39% from 2012 to 2016.

According to Christian Mouhanna, a researcher from France’s National Center for Scientific Research and an expert on police issues, legal changes made in 2017 are to blame for the recent increase in police violence. After a series of terror attacks between 2015 and 2016, French laws concerning when police officers can shoot their weapons changed from strictly in cases of self-defense to “in cases of absolute necessity and in a strictly proportionate manner.” Mouhanna asserts that many police have interpreted this statute to mean a vehicle can be shot at if refusing to comply with orders.