A French police officer who shot and killed a 17-year-old driver will be investigated for voluntary homicide, following two days of fires and violent protests, prosecutors said Thursday.
Overnight, protesters set cars and public buildings ablaze in Paris suburbs and unrest spread to some other French cities and towns, despite increased security efforts and the president’s calls for calm.
The killing of 17-year-old Nahel during a traffic check Tuesday, captured on video, shocked the country and stirred up long-simmering tensions between young people and police in housing projects and other disadvantaged neighborhoods around France.
France will deploy 40,000 police officers overnight to quell violence that engulfed cities and towns in the wake of the deadly police shooting, France’s interior minister said Thursday.
Scores of police officers have been injured, according to ministers. The justice minister, Eric Dupond-Moretti, gave a figure of 130 police officers injured.
“All this has to stop,” the minister declared. He gave no details about the types and seriousness of the injuries.
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin, who oversees the police, later gave a higher figure of 170 injured. He said none of the injuries were life-threatening.
Police forces clash with youths in Nanterre, outside Paris, Thursday, June 29, 2023.
AP Photo/Christophe Ena
Nahel’s surname has not been released by authorities or by his family. In earlier statements, lawyers for the family spelled the name Nael.
Nanterre prosecutor Pascal Prache said that based on an initial investigation, he concluded that “the conditions for the legal use of the weapon were not met.”
Two magistrates have been named to lead the investigation, he said. Under the French legal system, which differs from the U.S. and British systems, magistrates often assigned to lead investigations.
Prache said he requested that the officer be held in custody. That decision is to be made by another magistrate.
In a separate case, a police officer who fatally shot a 19-year-old Guinean man in western France earlier this month was handed preliminary charges of “voluntary homicide,” according to a statement by the local prosecutor on Wednesday. The man was fatally shot by an officer as he allegedly tried to escape a traffic stop. The investigation is still ongoing.
Clashes first erupted Tuesday night in and around the Paris suburb of Nanterre, where Nahel was killed, and the government deployed 2,000 police to maintain order Wednesday. But violence resumed after dusk.
Police and firefighters struggled to contain protesters and extinguish numerous blazes through the night that damaged schools, police stations and town halls or other public buildings, according to a spokesperson for the national police. The national police on Thursday reported fires or skirmishes in multiple cities overnight, from Toulouse in the south to Lille in the north, though the nexus of tensions was Nanterre and other Paris suburbs.
Police arrested 150 people around the country, more than half of them in the Paris region, the spokesperson said. She was not authorized to be publicly named according to police rules.
The number of injured was not immediately released.
Scenes of violence in France’s suburban areas echo 2005, when the deaths of 15-year-old Bouna Traore and 17-year-old Zyed Benna led to three weeks of nationwide riots, exposing anger and resentment in neglected, crime-ridden suburban housing projects.
The two boys entered a power substation to hide from police in the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois, and were electrocuted.
French President Emmanuel Macron held an emergency security meeting Thursday about the violence.
“These acts are totally unjustifiable,” Macron said at the beginning of the meeting, which aimed at securing hot spots and planning for the coming days “so full peace can return.”
Youths clash with Police forces in Nanterre, outside Paris, Thursday, June 29, 2023.
(AP Photo/Christophe Ena)
Macron also said it was time for “remembrance and respect” as Nahel’s mother called for a silent march Thursday in his honor on the square where he was killed.
Multiple vehicles were set ablaze in Nanterre and protesters shot fireworks and threw stones at police, who fired repeated volleys of tear gas. Flames shot out of three stories of a building, and a blaze was reported at an electrical plant. Fire damaged the town hall of the Paris suburb of L’Ile-Saint-Denis, not far from France’s national stadium and the headquarters of the Paris 2024 Olympics.
The police officer accused of the killing is in custody on suspicion of manslaughter and could face preliminary charges as soon as Thursday, according to the Nanterre prosecutor’s office.
French activists renewed calls to tackle what they see as systemic police abuse, particularly in neighborhoods like the one where Nahel lived, where many residents struggle with poverty and racial or class discrimination. Government officials condemned the killing and sought to distance themselves from the police officer’s actions.
Macron called the killing “inexplicable and inexcusable” and called for calm. “Nothing justifies the death of a young person,” he told reporters in Marseille on Wednesday.
Videos of the shooting shared online show two police officers leaning into the driver-side window of a yellow car before the vehicle pulls away as one officer fires into the window. The videos show the car later crashed into a post nearby.
The driver died at the scene, the prosecutor’s office said.
French activist Assa Traore during a gathering of Les soulevements de la terre in support of Nahel killed in Nanterre, and against the soulevements de la terre at the Place de la Republique in Paris on June 28, 2023.
Photo by Raphael Lafargue/ABACAPRESS.COM
Bouquets of orange and yellow roses now mark the site of the shooting, on Nanterre’s Nelson Mandela Square.
Speaking to Parliament, Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne said, “the shocking images broadcast yesterday show an intervention that appears clearly not to comply with the rules of engagement of our police forces.”
Deadly use of firearms is less common in France than in the United States, though several people have died or sustained injuries at the hands of French police in recent years, prompting demands for more accountability. France also saw protests against racial profiling and other injustice in the wake of George Floyd’s killing by police in Minnesota.
The most recent government statistics available show that 17 people were killed after police and gendarmerie officers shot at them in 2021.
Asked about police abuses, Macron said justice should be allowed to run its course.
A lawyer for Nahel’s family, Yassine Bouzrou, told The Associated Press they want the police officer prosecuted for murder instead of manslaughter.
French soccer star Kylian Mbappe, who grew up in the Paris suburb of Bondy, was among many shocked by what happened.
“I hurt for my France,” he tweeted.
Corbet reported from Paris. Oleg Cetinic and Christophe Ena in Nanterre, and Angela Charlton in Paris, contributed.
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