In a first, France opens terror probe for racist killing of Tunisian barber

On May 31, a Saturday, Hichem Miraoui was at his home in southeastern France on a video call with his sister Hanen, who lives nearby, and his mother in Tunisia.

It was late morning in Puget-sur-Argens, his village near the French Riviera.Suddenly, Hanen heard him exclaim. The phone then dropped to the floor and the line went silent.

Two hours later, Mouna Miraoui, his cousin, was at the Draguignan police station a few kilometres north, identifying his body.

Miraoui had been shot five times and killed in what French investigators – in a first – are identifying as a possibly racially motivated act of domestic terrorism.

“It’s a living hell, it’s unbearable,” Mouna told Al Jazeera by phone. “It was a shock for everyone. His sister fainted. Imagine if that day I had been invited to his house for dinner or a drink. I have young kids, what would have happened then?”

French investigators have opened a terrorism investigation in the murder case in which another victim was injured. A man identified as Christophe Belgembe has been arrested.The suspect regularly reposted content from France’s far-right National Rally party. He has admitted to shooting Miraoui but pleaded not guilty to the racially motivated nature of the crime.

In several videos uploaded to Facebook, which have since been deleted, the suspect appeared to have congratulated himself for “getting rid of 2-3 pieces of junk”, the French news site 20 Minutes reported. According to one of Miraoui’s sisters, Belgembe was well known among residents for his xenophobic views, in particular a “hatred of Arabs”.

Family members have told various media outlets that Miraoui, who was in his forties, had felt increasingly threatened by Belgembe, the legal owner of several guns as a member of a shooting sports club, in the days and weeks leading up to the alleged murder.A hairdresser who was close to his five sisters, Miraoui had been planning to return to Tunisia to visit his sick mother for the first time in eight years.

The alleged murder led to protests across France and brought to light what antiracism groups are calling an “ambient climate” of anti-Arab hate and xenophobia.

Between January and March of 2025, 79 Islamophobic hate crimes took place across France, an increase of more than 70 percent relevant to that same period in 2024, according to the latest statistics from France’s interior minister.

On Sunday, several thousand people gathered in the southern French city of Marseille and Miraoui’s hometown to protest against rising hate crimes, raising signs reading “racism has killed again” and “rest in peace, Hichem”.