2023-06-28 08:23:08
Twenty people were arrested on the sidelines of the violence that punctuated part of the night from Tuesday to Wednesday in Nanterre (Hauts-de-Seine) after the death of Nahel, 17, killed Tuesday morning by police fire after refusing to comply. The policeman was taken into custody.
The circumstances of the tragedy, which took place Tuesday morning at 8:15 a.m. at Nelson-Mandela Square, are still unclear. Police officers on motorcycles from the Direction de l’ordre public et de la circulation (DOPC) of the Paris police headquarters summoned the driver of a yellow Mercedes, which had been rented, to stop for a check , after noting several violations of the Highway Code. The boy would have first stopped his vehicle, before restarting suddenly.
VIDEO. Nanterre: Naël, 17, shot dead at the wheel of his car by a police officer when he refused to comply
According to the police version, an officer would have fired while the young motorist would have run over him. In a video, widely distributed on social networks, we see on the contrary that the policeman who fired was not positioned in front of the recalcitrant vehicle but at the level of the front left door. In these images, the official can be seen pointing the driver with his service weapon, before firing at point-blank range when the vehicle restarts with a bang.
The car ended its race a few tens of meters further, embedded in a post. The victim died shortly after being hit in the chest.
Fires and mortar fire in Nanterre
After the tragedy, residents gathered on Tuesday evening in front of the Nanterre police station demanding “Justice for Nahel” and chanting “police everywhere, justice nowhere”. “We already had a certain hatred of the police, it only reinforces it. We feel anger, incomprehension, what happened to Nahel is disproportionate, it revolts me, ”launches Yanis, in his twenties, at Parisian.
At the start of the evening, tensions erupted between residents and the police in the Vieux-Pont district of Nanterre. Firework mortars were fired at the buildings and a scooter was set on fire, according to our observations. A CCTV camera pole was degraded by the start of a fire in a parking lot, and “garbage cans are burning in almost all the cities of Nanterre”, lamented a police officer last night.
Fireworks were also fired near the prefecture and a fire broke out in a music school, on which the firefighters quickly intervened.
Many fires illuminated the streets of the Pablo Picasso city, where a car burned, according to AFP on the spot. Law enforcement tried to disperse small groups of rioters with tear gas.
Several people were injured in these clashes, including a man in a wheelchair who was slightly injured in the eye by a firework mortar.
Tensions spread to several other cities
The latest report from the Hauts-de-Seine prefecture, at 3 a.m., reports “sporadic movements” in several neighborhoods, adding that “events” were continuing, even if their intensity was decreasing.
If the police headquarters assured that the situation was “contained” shortly before midnight, tensions continued, spreading to other municipalities in the Paris region. The same source thus reported “very sporadic incidents” in Asnières, Colombes, Suresnes (Hauts-de-Seine), Clichy-sous-Bois (Seine-Saint-Denis) and Mantes-la-Jolie (Yvelines).
In the latter town, the annex town hall of Val-Fourré was set on fire and significant damage is to be deplored according to our information.
Fires were lit along the rails of the RER A between Nanterre and Rueil-Malmaison, several cars were set on fire, as well as garbage cans, and bus shelters were destroyed. Demonstrators erected some barricades.
The police faced “organized rioters who came to fight it out. Justice, the truth does not interest them, they are in the street to play the police” said on Europe 1 this Wednesday morning Matthieu Valet, spokesperson for the Independent Union of Police Commissioners, who speaks of an “ultra-violent night”.
He deplores the fact that during the night, the identity and address of the policeman who shot Nahel were broadcast on social networks. “A judicial inquiry is open on this subject under the aegis of the Paris prosecutor’s office, it is very serious, offenders intend to carry out a vendetta on this policeman”, he worries.
Several complaints filed
An investigation has been opened for refusal to comply and attempted intentional homicide of a person holding public authority. Another investigation, opened for intentional homicide by a person holding public authority, was entrusted to the IGPN (General Inspectorate of the National Police), the police force. The 38-year-old policeman suspected of the fatal shooting was taken into custody for intentional homicide.
“Feeling threatened does not justify shooting a bullet in the chest”
“It is a gesture which is absolutely illegitimate and which absolutely does not fit into a framework of self-defense since it is clear that the policeman was on the side of the vehicle which was stationary”, declares on franceinfo this Wednesday morning Me Jennifer Cambla, one of the lawyers of the family of Nahel. “Feeling threatened does not justify shooting a bullet in the chest,” she adds.
Another lawyer for the victim’s family, Me Yassine Bouzrou, announced two complaints “in the coming days”. One will target the author of the shooting for intentional homicide and his colleague for complicity.
A second complaint, for forgery in public writing, will be filed against the police, “who claimed that the young man had attempted to commit homicide on their person by trying to hit them, which is formally denied by the viewing of the video,” the lawyer announced.
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