“I read that we could help ourselves at Darty before it burns”

“You want to say something?” Silence. “You want to talk about dams?” Silence. In the box, Jean-Paul N. and Zidane W. have the same beige t-shirt and the same haggard attitude. However, it is not by chance that the two friends, aged 26 and 30, met again, Tuesday May 21, at the bar of the Nouméa criminal court. While riots have been shaking New Caledonia for ten days, they are being prosecuted in particular for violence against two municipal police officers.

“You obviously have the right to remain silent,” the president reminds them, Sylvie Morin. Heads lower, and here is the magistrate ready to retrace, with her words, the course of the famous night of May 18: a white Ford Transit stolen from a baker in Nouméa, a trip at 90 km/h in the streets of the Caledonian capital and an end of journey in the portcullises hastily installed by the police to intercept them.

Jean-Paul N., at the wheel, is suspected of having caused a swerve in the direction of a municipal police officer. Zidane W., passenger side, is accused of throwing a glass bottle at another official. “He thought he was going to die that evening! The bottle was smashed on his thigh, today he is arrested, protests their lawyer Philippe Reuter. We have dangerous people in front of us. My clients are municipal police officers, not punching bags!” At the request of the defendants, the hearing was postponed until June 11, time to prepare their defense. In the meantime, they will sleep in prison.

In a four-page circular, which franceinfo consulted, the Minister of Justice, Eric Dupond-Moretti, calls for “a criminal response marked with the greatest firmness against the perpetrators of the abuses perpetrated” 17,000 kilometers from Place Vendôme, headquarters of the Ministry of Justice. Tuesday, the Nouméa public prosecutor’s office revealed its latest figures: already 216 police custody, including 144 for attacks on property, 25 for violence against a person holding public authority, and 46 for attacks on persons.

Behind the first immediate appearances, the profile of certain rioters emerges. Jean-Paul N. and Zidane W. both already have a long criminal record. The first has eight convictions, between 2013 and 2021, for acts of theft and use of narcotics. He has been cultivating and consuming cannabis for fifteen years. Five to six joints per day on average. He admits, moreover, to having smoked it “several on the beach” the evening of the events.

Zidane W. also mixes alcohol with his cannabis consumption, “when there are birthdays, weddings”. He lives with his parents, living off extras as a cook in restaurants. He earns around 100,000 Pacific francs per month (840 euros), “well… from time to time.” Jean-Paul N., single, without children, lives in the Kanak tribe, in the commune of Houaïlou. He hunts, fishes, works in the fields, sometimes signs small masonry contracts. Behind them, two police officers ensure the security of the audience. Given the context, they are hooded.

This is how it is: with the state of emergency and the blockades which persist in the archipelago, the court must also adapt. To relieve the magistrates, current affairs are automatically postponed until later. “The gendarmerie told us that it was not possible to pick up eight defendants as a group in the current context,” intervenes the representative of the public prosecutor, Nicolas Kerfridin, referring to a case several years old, which should normally have been judged that day. The hearings take place without citizen assessors. Clerks are also missing. “Like many residents, they are stuck at home.”

It was also aboard a helicopter, an Air Force Puma, that four defendants arrived a little earlier in the morning at the Nouméa court. At the helm, men aged 22 to 25, two of whom are fathers. They are being prosecuted for burglary, theft with receiving stolen property, and theft during a meeting. The curfew started less than an hour ago, on May 18, when the gang was checked by car by the gendarmes at Bourail, 160 kilometers north of Nouméa.

The driver does not have a license. But above all, at the back of the pick-up, under a tarpaulin, the gendarmes discovered televisions, gas hobs, a microwave, a brush cutter, a chainsaw, tools of all kinds, packs beer and cash. On one of them, the gendarmes found 103,500 Pacific francs (880 euros). In the pockets of another, four times more, 400,000 Pacific francs (3,340 euros).

Mathurin S. claims to have read on social networks that he could “help yourself to Darty, before the warehouse burns”. “I saw videos where children and old grannies were helping themselves, so I went there. But we didn’t raise the blinds, it was already outside, on the road.”

“We didn’t steal, we took advantage of the opportunity.”

Mathurin S., a defendant

at the bar of the Nouméa criminal court

Mathurin S., Steeven T., Mathieu M. and their fourth sidekick are also known to the police. However, are they the figures of the “First line”, violent and agile, which plunged the “Caillou” into chaos? Their lawyer, Stéphane Bonomo, describes “lamp lamps”, who recognize the facts. In other words, opportunists who assure the president of the court that they simply reached out to pick up these boxes.

“We didn’t intend to riot, it was for the tribes, we wanted to please.

– But we’re not in a self-service store!

– We live in not very well-off families.

– Sorry, but you didn’t take any basic necessities? We can live without a toaster, we can live without a TV, right?

During the three hours of debate, never noneThe defendants do not touch on the thaw of the electorate, the constitutional reform which aims to open provincial elections or referendums to residents who have lived in New Caledonia for at least ten years, starting point of demonstrations and violence. If the leaders of the insurrectional movement have not been arrested, “the four people in front of you are not radical separatists. We do not blame them for having confronted the police, admits the prosecutor. But there are those who profit from wars, and there are those who profit from insurrectional unrest, and that is what they did!” Until 18 months in prison are required against them.

The court ultimately sentenced them to sentences ranging from four to eight months in prison. “I am sorry”, Mathurin S. stammers into the microphone, before leaving the courtroom. “We weren’t on the roadblocks, it was just to get a microwave.”