Eight police officers were taken into custody on Tuesday for suspicion of police violence, during the riots which had broken out in Marseille, following the death of Nahel at the end of June. Four members of the BAC were indicted on Thursday.
In Marseille, the four police officers from the anti-crime brigade (BAC) presented Thursday, July 20 to an examining magistrate were indicted, learned France Bleu Provence and franceinfo from a source close to the file. One of them is placed in pre-trial detention, the other three are under judicial supervision with a ban on practicing, specifies a source familiar with the matter to franceinfo.
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According to France Bleu Provence, a hundred people were present in the evening, Thursday, July 20, before the Marseilles court, the vast majority of police officers who came to support their colleagues. Some Marseille police officers went on sick leave in the evening of Thursday July 20, as a protest, franceinfo learned from close sources.
After suspicions of police violence during the riots that followed Nahel’s death, “eight police officers” had been placed in police custody on Tuesday July 18, specifies the parquet floor of Marseille. A judicial investigation had been opened on July 5 for “violence in meetings by a person holding public authority having resulted in an ITT of more than eight days”.
The victim, Hedi, is a 21-year-old man with no criminal record, according to his lawyer. Master Jacques Preziosi tells France Bleu Provence that he had simply come to party in Marseille with a friend when the police came “rushed on them” around 2 a.m. and attacked them at “baton blows” and of “flashball shots to the head” at short distance.
The IGPN and the judicial police seized
Touched, Hedi then fell to the ground where he was “beaten with truncheons and kicked”. His lawyer explains that he suffers from an intracerebral hematoma, a broken jaw, and loss of vision in his left eye. “So many things that are not caused by a single blow, but by a series of blows delivered with frightening violence”continues Jacques Preziosi.
“The facts would have taken place in the city center of Marseille”had specified the Marseille public prosecutor’s office, without further details, in its press release announcing the opening of this investigation, of which the judicial police and the General Inspectorate of the National Police (IGPN) were jointly seized.
In addition, another investigation was opened by the Marseille public prosecutor’s office on July 4 concerning the death of a 27-year-old man caused by a flash-ball type projectile during the same night from July 1 to 2, still in downtown Marseille.