Three months after the riots which engulfed several cities in France following the death of young Nahel, the Council of State, contacted by six associations, is looking into the sensitive issue of facial identity checks.
It made him “freak“. Abdoulaye broke down on April 1, 2022 in front of four police officers from the 16th arrondissement in Paris. “This is the 200th time I’ve been stopped by the police, I’m fed up, I’m stopped all the time, all the time!” can we hear on the video of the check, filmed by himself. Three months after the riots linked to the death of young Nahel, the Council ofEtat is looking into the sensitive issue of facial identity checks.
>> Death of Nahel: “There is an urgent need to trace identity checks,” says the Defender of Rights
Relying on numerous testimonies, like that of Abdoulaye, six associations, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, took action before the highest French administrative court to imposeEstate to change its practices in terms of police control, such as modifying the code of criminal procedure or imposing, for example, a receipt.
“There must not be two Frances in one country”
Abdoulaye’s anger, without physical violence, earned this 37-year-old black man a 2,400 euro fine for contempt of persons responsible for public order. He denounces “the arbitrary side” and the repetition of these “facies checks”.
“I have white friends, 30 years old, 35 years old, who tell me they have never been stopped by the police.”
Today, Abdoulaye remains convinced that it was the color of his skin, his look and a form of ethnic profiling that decided the officials to choose him that day from the flow of other motorists. “In a shopping center where you go somewhere and in the middle of the crowd, they stop you, they put you aside, they search you. Then you ask the question ‘Why are you checking me?’ and they tell you, ‘Don’t ask questions, that’s how it is!’. That has to change because there shouldn’t be two Frances in one country.”
Abdoulaye says he has experienced nearly 200 identity checks, which he estimates are based on his facial features, since his childhood. This information is impossible to verify since in France, the police do not issue receipts to people they control on public roads.
France already condemned several times
The President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, recognized on December 4, 2020 the existence of racial checks, after the beating of black music producer Michel Zecler, provoking the ire of police unions.
Several times in recent years, France has been condemned on this subject: in June 2021 by the Paris Court of Appeal or even in 2016 by the Court of Cassation, which for the first time definitively condemned the State for so-called “facies” checks. In a report dated 2017, the Defender of Rights concluded that a young man “perceived as black or Arab” was twenty times more likely to be checked than the rest of the population.