A possibly anti-Semitic attack on a young man, Jérémy Cohen, in a Paris suburb moves the French in the final stretch of the presidential election campaign.

The death of the disabled man of Jewish faith in Bobigny was seven weeks ago, but only now has it been widely reported.

On Tuesday, Marine Le Pen expressed the suspicion that the government might have covered up what happened "because they didn't want to talk about something like that during the election campaign".

On the France Inter radio station, she complained that the police and the judiciary were being used as instruments.

"I wonder if we don't need a parliamentary inquiry," she said.

It must be found out whether the case was deliberately concealed.

Michael Wiegel

Political correspondent based in Paris.

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President Macron has not yet commented on this, but had an official from the Office of the President call the mother of the deceased.

The President is following the case and will ensure full clarification, the Elysée Palace said.

The victim's father, Gérald Cohen, told BFM-TV that he had been asking everywhere for help after the official investigation was deadlocked.

The police had brought him his son's kippah, the Jewish head covering, which had been found at the crime scene.

Since then, the suspicion has nagged at him that his son could have been tortured because of his faith.

Video shows chase and beating scenes

After an appeal in the neighborhood, Cohen had received a video recording that an eyewitness had taken from his window.

Jérémy Cohen was literally being chased before he ran across the streetcar tracks, seemingly without a head, and was hit by the train.

The eyewitness filmed how he was surrounded by a horde of young men at a doorway.

It is not clear why the men pounced on Cohen.

“They hit him, hit him without him fighting back.

When he was on the ground, they kicked him," Gérald Cohen said on television on Tuesday.

To protect his son's dignity, he has asked that the video not be shown.

But he expressed his incomprehension that his son's death was presented as a banal traffic accident and the public was not informed about the suspicions.

In his distress he turned to Eric Zemmour, the right-wing extremist presidential candidate, who also comes from a Jewish family.

Zemmour has repeatedly complained about rampant anti-Semitism in the banlieue, which is mostly inhabited by French people with a Muslim immigrant background.

He spread the video recording on social networks against the father's will and suddenly made the case known.

"Jérémy Cohen's death is the terrifying symptom of our country's tragedy," said Zemmour.

The lawyer for the Cohen family emphasized that his clients' only goal was for an investigation and the circumstances of the death to be clarified.

A police union spokesman, Mathieu Valet, told C'News that police officers had not received any testimony during their investigation into the Bobigny neighborhood.

The video was also withheld from them.

It is a district where drugs are traded and trust in the police is low.

So far no suspect has been arrested.