France spends another night in the turmoil of urban violence, the third in a row after the death of a teenager near Paris, killed by a police officer who has been jailed for premeditated murder.
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Nahel, 17, was shot in the chest during a roadside raid by two police bikers after refusing to comply in Nanterre, west of Paris. In France, the minimum age for legal driving is 18.
According to a video authorized by AFP, one of the two police officers held him at gunpoint and then shot him at point-blank range.
The teenager’s death had already led to two nights of violence in France, particularly in the Paris region, and the scene was repeated overnight Thursday into Friday.
AFP
By 2:30 a.m. (GMT 0:30 am), police had made at least 328 arrests nationally, according to people around Gérald Darmanin.
A police source said the victim’s mother, in a van, wearing a “Justice for Nahel” shirt, opened the procession from Nander which brought together 6,200 people. They went to the scene of the tragedy to observe a minute’s silence.
But the demonstration ended in chaos, with clashes, tear gas and fireworks, a few fires and the destruction of street furniture. According to AFP, at least one bank was robbed and several cars were set on fire.
According to an intelligence note cited by a police source, violence could become “generalized” in the “following nights,” marked by “actions targeting the police and state or symbols of authority.”
A Molotov cocktail was thrown at a police station specifically in Pa (southwest) where the department’s province was informed.
A senior official of the National Police described some of their businesses and shops as “vandalized”, “looted and burnt” on the rue de Rivoli, which leads to the famous Halles and the Louvre museum in Paris.
AFP
At least three cities near the capital have decided to introduce curfews, sometimes for several days, in their entire area or in some districts, for all or only minors.
Clamart, near Paris, and Compiegne, north of the capital, have introduced the measure from 9pm to 6am (7pm to 4am GMT).
In Lille (in the north), a town hall in a working-class district in the south was set on fire and another stoned in the east of the city, the Hotel de Ville reported.
AFP
In the Paris region, buses and trams stopped running from 9pm on Thursday (7pm GMT).
Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin announced the mobilization of 40,000 police on Thursday evening, including 5,000 in Paris (up from 2,000 the previous night).
According to a police source, RAID and GIGN, the elite intervention units of the police and gendarmerie, respectively, are based in the country’s main cities of Toulouse (southwest), Marseille (southeast), Lyon (southeast), Lille (north), or Bordeaux (south-west).
The government assured that invoking emergency law, as demanded by some voices on the political right, was “not an option under consideration today”.
The case has reignited controversy over law enforcement action in France, where 13 deaths were recorded in 2022 after refusing to comply.
“I don’t blame the police, I blame a person: the one who took my son’s life,” the teenager’s mother, Mounia M., said in an interview broadcast Thursday evening on France 5 television channel.
AFP
Nanterre’s public prosecutor said Thursday morning that the public prosecutor’s office considers that the 38-year-old policeman who opened fire “did not meet the legal conditions for the use of a weapon.” , Pascal Brach.
In police custody, the shooting policeman’s “first” and “last words” were an apology to the family, his lawyer Me Laurent-Franck Liénard told French television channel BFMTV on Thursday. I don’t want to kill”.
The police officer was charged with manslaughter and remanded in pre-trial detention, the public prosecutor later announced.
Tragedy came in the form of a confrontation last Sunday when he appeared before the prosecutor (public ministry) last Sunday in consideration of a summons in September, during a police search of the car driven by Nahel, who is known for refusing to comply. Before a Juvenile Court.
