The family’s lawyer announced that he had filed a complaint for forgery, because the police intervention sheet, dated the day of the events, mentions that “the driver tried to leave by rushing into the official”. However, the amateur video, published on social networks shortly after, shows the opposite.
“The driver tried to drive off by running into the official.” This sentence appears in black and white on the police intervention sheet, consulted by franceinfo, relating to the roadside check during which Nahel, a 17-year-old teenager, was killed by a police officer on the morning of June 27 in Nanterre. However, the images of the scene, filmed by a witness and broadcast on social networks shortly after the facts, contradict this version. “If there is no video to deny this document which is false, the prosecutor would have decided that the shooting of the police officer is legal and therefore we would not even have had an investigation”estimated Yassine Bouzrou, Nahel’s family lawyer, Thursday July 6, on franceinfo.
The latter therefore filed a complaint for “false public writing”. Because, he argues, this sheet is “a document written by a policeman which falsely indicates that Nahel tried to hit a policeman by running over him”. “It was another police officer who wrote this file. But this file was written on the information given by the police officers who tried to arrest Nahel”explains the lawyer. “The police officers who give this false information know full well that a file will be filled out on the basis of their information”, continues Yassine Bouzrou. This sheet and its contents, at the heart of the case, raise several questions.
By whom is this card written?
According to information from franceinfo, this file was created on Tuesday June 27 at 8:16 a.m., on an internal police platform, called Pégase, an acronym that stands for Event management, activity management and crew security. The purpose of this software is “to improve the management of emergency ‘rescue police’ calls and to reduce the response times of police crews in the field thanks to a geolocation device for vehicles”is it written in the decree of January 21, 2008, which formalizes its creation.
>> Death of Nahel: what is a Pegasus file?
Since then, a new version of the software has been released in 2016. Rolled out gradually since May 2022, we find there both the transcription of the calls of any citizen around the 17th and the information transmitted by the police on their waves, because it “allows exchanges on the move with the staff located in the field”, specifies the national police to franceinfo.
“This software is used to leave a written record, via intervention sheets, calls received on the 17 and radio reports from the crews. It relates the course of an intervention, a summary, a synthesisdetails the national police. It is an operational ‘daybook’ for police services. These intervention sheets are in no way minutes or legal acts.
What does this card say?
In the case of Nahel’s death, the policeman from the Hauts-de-Seine control station is therefore supposed to have transcribed what he understood from the remarks made by his colleague in the field. Thus, on the intervention sheet, it is written, at 8:19 a.m., that“a shot was fired” and that the vehicle “just crashed into a pole”. Then, at 8:21 a.m., the driver is “unconscious”. A minute later, the mention “Individual shot in the chest on the left side. The police officer moved forward to stop him. The driver tried to drive off by running into the officer” is added. Followed by : “A passenger in the back was arrested. An individual on the run.”
The sheet then specifies that the public prosecutor and his deputy go there at 9:35 a.m. and, at the same time, that the General Inspectorate of the National Police (IGPN) is seized. At 10.11 a.m., details of the events that have just taken place are added and it is again mentioned: “The cut engine is reignited and the driver rushes at the police officer who uses his weapon.”
What is the version of the policeman?
The defense of the police officer suspected of having killed Nahel maintains that the official never wrote this sentence. Louser his lawyer, Laurent-Franck Liénard, there is no “false in public writing, there is no writing”. “My client fired, he was brought to the premises of the IGPN. He was heard, he never wrote anything so the report, there is none”he said, two days after the fact, on BFMTV.
A summary of his first hearings, carried out by the IGPN, appears in the indictment of the general prosecutor’s office of the Versailles court of appeal on his continued detention on remand, which franceinfo was able to consult. According to this document, the police officer assures that he “found backed against the sidewalk and the low wall behind him”. The official then recounts having taken “the decision to open fire to avoid [que le conducteur] does not run over someone or ‘carry’ his colleague and when he himself had been ‘a little pushed’, when the driver had accelerated”.
Also in this document, which quotes the first elements of analysis of the IGPN, it is written that “the exploitation of the conversations held on the ‘conference 32’ of the police services” demonstrates that the police officer indicted for “voluntary homicide” did not “not used”, “during his exchanges” with the policeman of the control station, the following sentence: “The driver tried to drive off by running into the official.”
Why is the lawyer filing a complaint?
The two passengers in the car Nahel was driving also said that their friend did not run into the policeman. The passenger seated in the front seat, next to Nahel, delivered his version of the facts to the IGPN investigators who had summoned him. He said that Nahel was kicked by the butts of the police, and after the third blow, his friend’s foot “stepped on the accelerator”. “I saw him dying, he was shaking”said this witness.
The rear passenger, a 14-year-old boy, wrote in a letter to the Parisian that one of the policemen would have said “that he was going to put a [balle] in the head”. Then Nahel’s foot would have “released the brake, probably out of panic, trying to protect themselves”. Like the front passenger, he claims that the car, equipped with an automatic transmission, then moved forward on its own.
For Nahel’s family lawyer, an error on the part of a police officer in an intervention sheet is difficult to imagine. “The officer filling out this document is a professional. If he notes that a vehicle tried to hit and kill a police officer, I think the information is important enough not to be mistaken”, believes Yassine Bouzrou. The Nanterre public prosecutor’s office, contacted by franceinfo, says it has not yet received the complaint for forgery in public writing, but that it will examine it before deciding on any legal action.