Biography

Samira Bellil was born on November 24, 1972 in Algiers, Algeria. She died on September 3, 2004 in Paris, France.

Leader in the movement advocating Muslim women's rights in France.

Became famous in France with the publication of her autobiographical book "Dans l'enfer des tournantes" (Ed. Denöel, 9 October 2002). She described there the violence she endured in a Muslim immigrant suburb of Paris, where she was gang-raped twice when she was a teenager by her boyfriend and a group of his friends, and then rejected by her family and friends. Her book put the light on the difficulties girls face in the heavily immigrant French "cités".