The two men, aged 23 and 27, who had been taken into police custody on Tuesday as part of the investigation into the death of Jérémie Cohen, knocked down by a tram on February 16 in Bobigny (Seine-Saint- Denis), were referred this Thursday afternoon and presented to a judge, indicates the public prosecutor, Éric Mathais. The prosecutor’s office requested remand detention against them.
The two men had surrendered to the police on Tuesday afternoon. During their hearings, they described two scenes of violence that occurred that day. On a video that has gone viral on social networks, the 31-year-old victim was seen running to escape his attackers, crossing the roadway and then the tram tracks before being hit.
“No objective element to characterize a discriminatory motive” at this stage, insists the prosecutor
“A first scene, which did not appear on the video, involved the two individuals and the victim, specifies the parquet floor in a press release. A second scene (visible, this one) then intervened, always to the detriment of the victim. Only one of the two individuals took part. The motive for the two attacks remains to be determined. In their testimony, the two young men in police custody mentioned “the behavior of the victim, to which they would have reacted by hitting him”, continues the prosecutor, without giving more details.
Was the attack anti-Semitic? The investigation on letters rogatory, in the hands of the judicial police of Seine-Saint-Denis, will have to clarify its circumstances. “At this stage, there is no objective element to characterize a discriminatory motive, in particular anti-Semitic, at the origin of this violence”, Éric Mathais again indicated on Thursday.
Regarding the man who would have participated only in the first scene of violence, the prosecution requested an indictment for “willful violence in a meeting”. Another indictment for “willful violence resulting in death without intention to give it” was requested concerning the second suspect, who allegedly kicked Jérémie just before the accident.
The family lawyer is satisfied to see “things taken in hand in a very serious way”
Joined in the middle of the afternoon, the family lawyer, Me Franck Serfati, reacted before knowing the outcome of the two referrals. “It is the logical continuation of the investigation and as I had the opportunity to say: the file is anything but empty. Now, there will be arrests, police custody and indictments, ”he welcomes. If he had denounced the “incomplete and unsatisfactory” work of the police at the start of the investigation, he now welcomes the fact that “things are taken in hand in a very serious way by the investigating judge who was appointed on March 29”.
A few days before the first round of the presidential election, the drama had taken a political turn. The family of the victim had notably been received by the far-right candidate Éric Zemmour, who had demanded that “complete clarity” be made, by justice, concerning the drama.