The Algerian Tourist: Hero of the Military Parade in France!

SadaNews - An Arab tourist suddenly found himself at the center of a serious incident on July 14, 2002. He was watching the military parade in Paris to celebrate the fall of the Bastille when a gunshot rang out nearby.

 

The daring individual is named Mohamed Chelali, an Algerian residing in Canada, who had stopped in Paris with his family for a day on their way back to Algeria for the summer holiday.

On that day, France was celebrating the fall of the Bastille during the French Revolution in 1880, and the crowd was watching a military parade in honor of the occasion on the Champs-Élysées near the Arc de Triomphe.

The young man, Maxim Bruneri, did not attend the celebration empty-handed. He brought with him in a brown guitar bag a .22 caliber rifle with a full magazine.

As then-President Jacques Chirac passed by in a convertible car inaugurating the military parade and reached about 50 meters from the young man's position, he unexpectedly drew his rifle and fired a shot at Jacques Chirac.

Fortunately, the bullet missed its target, and two men rushed to the young man and were able to wrest the rifle from him, bringing him down and incapacitating him before the police arrived. The two men were the Algerian tourist Mohamed Chelali and a Frenchman named Jacques Webert.

The 46-year-old Algerian recounted the events to a television channel at the time, stating that he rushed forward and seized the rifle that another man had knocked out of the shooter’s hands, adding that the police arrived at the scene after two or three minutes.

French media described the Algerian Mohamed Chelali as a brave bystander, and the authorities at the time honored him by awarding him the Legion of Honor, which is one of the highest honors in France.

The shooter who missed Jacques Chirac was a young man affiliated with the far-right, described as having "neo-Nazi affiliations and a history of mental disturbances." He had participated for years in far-right demonstrations and was placed on the government watch list since 1998.

Investigations revealed that the shooter, Maxim Bruneri, had purchased the rifle he used, which was of a light caliber, a week prior and had prepared for the act by practicing shooting.

Notably, Bruneri left a message on a forum for neo-Nazis stating, "Watch television on Sunday, I will be the star... death to (the Zionist occupation government), 88!" The last number is a code signifying "Heil Hitler!"

Reports indicated that the French extremist planned to shoot himself next but was unable to do so. He initially confessed that he wanted to "kill the president" out of motives stemming from his far-right ideology, but later claimed that everything that happened was a suicide attempt and that he hoped one of the security men would shoot him dead.

The assailant was transferred to a psychiatric hospital, then appeared before the court and was convicted of attempted murder in December 2004, sentenced to only 10 years in prison due to his mental incapacity. In 2009, after seven years, he was released.

At this point, news of the Algerian, who did not stand idly by that day despite the dangerous situation, came to a halt. However, it is certain that this exceptional incident stayed with him for a long time in his life, and that he recounted to his children and grandchildren how he once helped save the life of the President of France.

Source: RT