One of the men who participated in the attack on three plainclothes police officers on Wednesday July 20 in the Guillotière district of Lyon (Rhône) while they were trying to arrest a person suspected of theft, was indicted on Tuesday July 26, announced the parquet floor of Lyon. “The respondent (…) was indicted today on the charge of aggravated violence against police officers and placed in pre-trial detention”the prosecution told AFP.
Two police officers were injured on the evening of July 20 while trying with a colleague to arrest a person suspected of theft, in the middle of a crowd who violently attacked them. On a video posted on social networks, we can see three plainclothes police officers, two men and a woman, being beaten and thrown by projectiles in front of the entrance to a convenience store in the sensitive Guillotière district.
After the arrest of a first suspect who was then exonerated, a second man, aged 26, in an irregular situation, was arrested on Sunday. During a public hearing of the detention liberties judge, the young man, who has no criminal record, “did not dispute the facts” and has “apologized”described to AFP Me Laurent Bohé, lawyer for the three victims.
Lyon prosecutor Nicolas Jacquet told AFP that “investigations are actively continuing to identify, locate and arrest the other perpetrators”. He said on Monday that “the author of the tearing of a necklace at the origin of the intervention of the police”18 years old, and “already convicted of theft”was “currently on the run” and “actively sought under a search warrant issued by the prosecution”.
Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin reacted on Twitter after the arrest of the first suspect, also a foreigner, assuring that he would be expelled. Once this suspect was exonerated, he wrote, in a second tweet: “In connection with the events or not, known for many questionings (…) this individual has nothing to do in our country”. The man in question is the subject of a previous obligation to leave the territory (OQTF).