Julien Videlaine
Born: 1995
stabbed to death: 24 July 2014
Residence: Nogent-sur-Oise
Origin: victim: French/Algerian, perpetrator: Turkish/Kurdish
Children: None
Perpetrator: Muhittin U.

For two years, the French-Algerian Julien Videlaine (19 years) and the Kurdish Nuzan U. (19 years) experienced a hidden love. They met in 2012 in front of Marie-Curie secondary school in Nogent-sur-Oise, a town 50 kilometers north of Paris.

Julian was then in his final year and was preparing to join the army as a mechanic at the Creil (Oise) military base. Nuzan was working on a beautician's degree. The attraction between the two was strong and their relationship soon took a serious turn. They wanted to marry and have children, but Nuzan feared her father's reaction because of cultural differences. Julian was young and thought love would prevail.

The lovers met in secret and took every opportunity to spend time together without arousing suspicion. On July 24, 2014, restaurant owner Muhittin U., Nuzan's father, had announced that he would not be back until late in the evening. Nuzan's mother, brothers and sisters went on a family visit to Belgium. At the end of the afternoon, Julian arrived at his girlfriend's house. The young couple decided to take a bath. But while they were taking a bath, they were alerted to a noise from downstairs.

19 stab wounds

Nuzan gets out of the bath, listens and squats down to look under the door. She sees her father on the hallway. He asks her to join him on the first floor. She is in a panic. Julien has left his clothes in his room and she must hide them before he sees them. But when she goes out into the hallway, Muhittin U. appears with a knife and his hand and he attacks Julien. Nuzan tries to intervene, but she gets hurt on her hand. Muhittin continues to strike, then stops, goes down the stairs, puts the knife in the kitchen and runs away.

In a state of shock, Nuzan cried out for help. At 7:10 p.m., police and firefighters entered the house and went to the bathroom. They discovered Julien in a sitting position, his knees bent to his chest, his head between his legs. He was naked, covered in blood, and his body was pierced on all sides. He had been stabbed 19 times, three of them in the heart. To the police, Nuzan described the murder of her boyfriend by her father and explained that he was strongly opposed to her relationship with Julien, who was not of Kurdish descent, as she was. The year before, a classmate had informed her father about the relationship. Muhittin had then confiscated her cell phone and threatened her with death if she continued to see the young French-Algerian man. Her mother had considered sending her to Turkey to find a husband.

Muhittin fled to Turkey. According to the information gathered by investigators, he lived in the Batman area, a region bordering Syria, where he was originally from. Despite the accuracy of this information and the issuance of an international arrest warrant on September 9, 2014, nothing happened for months.

Claude Videlaine, Julien's father, on behalf of the family, asked the French authorities to put pressure on Turkey "so that the murderer of our son is arrested." In the four years that followed, more and more family members are mobilized to launch new actions to obtain justice for Julien. In May 2018, Turkey arrests Muhittin.

"A burglar"

To investigators, Muhittin denies a crime because of honor. On July 24, 2014, he was worried about his daughter, who was not answering the phone, and decided to quickly go to his house to make sure she was okay. As he entered the house, he heard screaming from upstairs. He recognizes Nuzan's voice and also hears a male voice. Thinking she is being attacked, he grabs a knife from the kitchen and goes upstairs. Then he goes into the bathroom and is confronted by a naked man. "For him, it's a burglar," says his lawyer Franck Berton. Muhittin assumed the man was trying to sexually abuse his daughter and says he "lost control" and hit Julian Videlaine with the knife. Muhittin stated that he was unaware of his daughter's relationship with Julian, whom he had never seen.

Faced with her father's statements, Nuzan backtracked on her earlier claims and admitted that her father had never heard of her boyfriend.

Muhittin's criminal trial for murder will begin on September 19, 2022.