2023-08-03 06:17:00
Justice is looking Thursday at the pre-trial detention of a policeman, suspected with three colleagues of having seriously injured a young man during the riots in Marseille, a flammable case which sparked a sling in some police stations and a political controversy.
The investigating chamber of the Aix-en-Provence Court of Appeal (Bouches-du-Rhône) will have to decide whether or not to keep this police officer from the Marseille anti-crime brigade (BAC) in prison, suspected of to be at the origin of an LBD shooting at the beginning of July which notably led to the amputation of part of the skull of Hedi, 22 years old.
The official must be present at the public hearing which will begin at 08:30.
According to the local news site Marsactu, which does not cite a source, the general prosecutor’s office will request continued detention, which the latter refuses to comment on when questioned by AFP.
The situation of another official, also implicated and who challenges his judicial review, will also be examined, but behind closed doors.
Decisions will be made quickly, possibly during the day.
The imprisonment of the Marseille policeman two weeks ago, after that of the policeman indicted for having killed Nahel M, 17, in Nanterre at the end of June, triggered a slingshot in part of the ranks of the police.
“Knowledge in prison prevents me from sleeping,” said police chief Frédéric Veaux, who considers “that before a possible trial, a police officer has no place in prison”.
Remarks which sparked a controversy, up to the top of the state, on the independence of justice and the status of the police, also upsetting the magistrates.
“It is up to the judicial authority alone to conduct the investigations useful to the manifestation of the truth, in all impartiality and free from pressure”, moreover recalled the heads of the Aix-en-Provence Court of Appeal. in Provence.
“Risk of consultation” of the police
It is precisely in order not to give the impression of pressure on the judicial institution that the police unions play the appeasement and do not call for mobilizations of support on the sidelines of the hearing, even if several of them they are hoping for release.
If the judges decided on a release, there would be a “monumental risk of consultation” with the three other police officers prosecuted, estimates Hedi’s lawyer, Me Jacques-Antoine Preziosi.
The young man should not be present because of his great fatigue, he told AFP.
Monday, Hedi had declared on BFMTV to have “confidence” in justice but had regretted not having had support from the State. Since then, the government spokesperson has called him to hear from him, confirmed Olivier Veran’s entourage.
The lawyer for the police officer in pre-trial detention, Me Pierre Gassend, did not respond to AFP’s requests.
In the Hedi case, four police officers are indicted for “willful violence resulting in an ITT (total incapacity for work) of more than 8 days, aggravated by three circumstances in that they were committed in a meeting, with the use or threat of ‘a weapon and per person vested with public authority in the exercise of his functions’.
The Marseille prosecutor’s office had requested their placement in pre-trial detention, which is rare. In the end, only one was imprisoned and the three others were placed under judicial control with “prohibition from entering into contact with the co-authors, the victim and the other protagonists and prohibition from exercising the professional activity of police officer” .
The Mediapart news site also revealed on Monday that the name of one of them appeared in another file of police violence dating from the “yellow vests” in 2018.
Asked by AFP, the Marseille prosecutor’s office confirmed that this policeman had been heard as a witness in the context of the rogatory commission relating to the so-called “Maria” case, renamed “Angelina”, since the young woman testified in the press.
After two dismissals, an investigating judge noting that “without a shadow of a doubt” the people who attacked the 19-year-old young woman “had the quality of police officers”, the investigations resumed.
A total of 31 investigations by the General Inspectorate of the National Police (IGPN), the police force, were opened following the riots, AFP learned on Wednesday from a police source.
03/08/2023 06:16:28 – Aix-en-Provence (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
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