four young people sentenced to sentences of one to two years in prison

For the prosecutor, Nahel’s death “was only a pretext for an unprecedented outburst of hatred”.

Four men aged around twenty were sentenced, Thursday April 4, by the Versailles criminal court to sentences ranging from one to two years in prison for their participation in the attack on the Elancourt police station (Yvelines ) end of June. After the death in Nanterre on June 27 of Nahel, 17, killed at close range by a police officer during a road check, riots engulfed many cities across the country and public buildings were targeted.

In Elancourt, with a burned police vehicle, damage to the police station, bus stops and businesses, the damage caused represents more than 100,000 euros, recalled the president of the court. For the prosecutor, the death of Nahel “was only a pretext for an unprecedented outburst of hatred.”

Only one defendant released

“I find it absurd”said Me Chloé Rueff, the lawyer for two of the defendants, who assured AFP after the court’s decision that she was going to appeal for one of her clients, placed under a committal order. “There are events which occurred on the evening of the events which we cannot attribute to them but which we wanted to punish”, she argues.

In Elancourt, a group of around thirty people with masked faces attacked a municipal police vehicle, spraying it with an flammable liquid which caught fire on contact with a spark from fireworks mortar. The five defendants all admitted to their presence on site at the time of some of the events but denied having participated in the preparation of the gasoline bottles or the firing of fireworks. Only one of them was acquitted, the prosecution considering that he was the only one whose active participation was not proven.