Scenes of looting, burned vehicles, degraded public buildings: many French cities, in the Paris region and in the provinces, bore the scars of a third night of violence on Friday which shortened a trip to Brussels by President Emmanuel Macron, returned to Paris for crisis meetings.
As of Friday morning, Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne brought together several ministers, denouncing “unbearable and inexcusable” acts. The French head of state left a European summit in Brussels, canceling a press conference, to return to Paris where he notably convened an interministerial crisis unit at 1:00 p.m. local time, the second in two days. .
This cell meets at a time when ministers are wondering about the possibility of establishing a state of emergency – demanded by the right and the far right.
“All hypotheses” are considered to restore “republican order”, including the state of emergency, said Friday Mme Borne, while President Macron said he was ready to adapt “without taboos” the device for maintaining order.
The state of emergency, which allows the administrative authorities to take exceptional measures such as a traffic ban, was notably triggered in November 2005 after 10 days of riots in the suburbs, triggered by the death of two teenagers, electrocuted in an electrical transformer where they had hidden to escape the police.
The new violence also broke out after the death on Tuesday of a teenager, Nahel, 17, who was shot in the chest during a traffic check by a police officer. The latter, a 38-year-old motorcyclist, was charged Thursday with intentional homicide and placed in detention. A video shows him holding the young man at gunpoint before shooting at point-blank range when the car suddenly restarts.
The unrest has gone crescendo since Tuesday and spread to new cities overnight from Thursday to Friday, during which 492 buildings were affected, 2,000 vehicles burned and 3,880 public road fires started, according to official figures. 875 people, often very young, were arrested.
Looting and clashes
“Schools, municipal police, annex town halls, social centers, buses, trams have been targeted, attacked, vandalized, ransacked”, denounced the president of the Paris region Valérie Pécresse by denouncing acts “intolerable vis-à-vis the “public services that the inhabitants need”.
The region must vote on Friday for emergency aid of 20 million euros to help mayors rebuild public facilities damaged in the riots.
In the poorest department of metropolitan France, Seine-Saint-Denis, north-east of Paris, “almost all the municipalities” have been affected, often by flash actions, with many public buildings targeted, according to a police source. In Drancy, rioters used a truck to force the entrance to a shopping center, partly looted and burned, said a police source.
In Paris itself, around forty businesses were degraded according to the Public Prosecutor’s Office. Stores in the city center “were vandalized”, “looted or even burned”, according to a high-ranking police officer.
At least three cities near the capital decided on Thursday to introduce curfews.
In Marseille, France’s second city, 156 trash fires were recorded, “dozens of damaged businesses, some vandalized and looted” and 14 cars burned, according to the town hall.
“Apologies” from the policeman
In Pau (south-west), a molotov cocktail was thrown at the police station while in Lille (north), the town hall of a working-class district was set on fire and another was stoned, according to local authorities.
The government had announced the mobilization Thursday evening of 40,000 police and gendarmes, including 5,000 in Paris (against 2,000 the previous night).
The case has reignited controversy over law enforcement action in France, where a record 13 deaths were recorded in 2022 after refusals to comply.
It also provoked a reaction from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, during the regular UN press briefing in Geneva, which urged France to seriously tackle the deep problems of racism and racial discrimination among law enforcement.
Berlin, for its part, expressed its “concern” at the situation, while recalling that the French authorities had “clearly condemned” Nahel’s death.
“I don’t blame the police, I blame a person: the one who took my son’s life,” said Mounia M., the teenager’s mother, on Thursday.
In police custody, “the first” and the “last words” of the latter were apologies to the family, reported Thursday his lawyer, Me Laurent-Franck Liénard, on the television channel BFMTV, affirming that his client ” n / A [vait] didn’t want to kill.
The tragedy at the origin of the conflagration occurred during a police check of the car driven by Nahel, known for refusals to comply, the last having given rise to his presentation to the prosecution last Sunday, in view of a summons in September before a juvenile court.