(Nanterre) Degraded public buildings, looted stores, burned vehicles… Many cities in the Paris region and in the provinces woke up on Friday with the scars of a new night of violence, putting pressure on the executive, meeting in a crisis cell in early afternoon.
What there is to know
- A 17-year-old boy, Nahel, was killed by a police officer on Tuesday during a traffic check in Nanterre;
- The circumstances of his death aroused emotion and anger in Nanterre and in France as a whole, which experienced its third night of riots;
- French President Emmanuel Macron ruled Nahel’s death “inexplicable” and “inexcusable” on Wednesday, but condemned the riots on Thursday;
- The march in tribute to the young man took place Thursday afternoon in Nanterre;
- The police officer responsible for the fatal shooting was charged with intentional homicide;
- The police officer apologized to Nahel’s family while in custody, according to his lawyer.
For the second time in two days, President Emmanuel Macron, who left the European summit in Brussels, chaired an interministerial crisis unit since 1 p.m.
Asked during a trip to Evry-Courcouronnes about the possibility of resorting to a state of emergency, Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne replied that “all the hypotheses” were “considered with a priority: the return of the ‘republican order’, when the Élysée assured that Emmanuel Macron was ready to adapt the device for maintaining order ‘without taboos’.
During the night from Thursday to Friday, the police carried out 875 arrests, including 408 in Paris and its inner suburbs, according to the final report of the Ministry of the Interior.
A total of 249 police and gendarmes were injured overnight.
Seized by an amateur video, the close range shooting of a police motorcyclist on Tuesday morning on a young man of 17, during a road check in Nanterre, continues to set fire to many working-class neighborhoods in the country.
To stem a “generalization” of urban violence, the authorities had mobilized 40,000 police and gendarmes overnight from Thursday to Friday, as well as elite intervention units such as the BRI, the Raid (police) and the Groupe d intervention of the national gendarmerie (GIGN).
Despite this massive deployment, violence and damage took place in multiple cities: 119 public buildings attacked according to the Interior.
“There is no very violent confrontation in direct contact with the police, but there are a number of vandalized stores, looted or even burned businesses”, detailed a senior police officer. national.
According to the Paris prosecutor’s office, 150 people were taken into custody in connection with the events of the night and around forty degraded stores.
This was the case in the heart of Paris, at Les Halles and in the rue de Rivoli which leads to the Louvre, but also in the Parisian suburbs, in the Rouen conurbation, in Nantes and in Brest.
To ensure “the safety of agents and passengers”, all Ile-de-France buses and trams will be interrupted at 9 p.m. at the latest “every evening until further notice”, announced Friday Ile de France Mobilités (IDFM), the authority responsible for organizing transport in the capital region.
Molotov cocktail, fireworks
In Seine-Saint-Denis, “almost all the municipalities” have been impacted, noted a police source. Many supermarkets were looted, particularly in Montreuil and Épinay-sur-Seine.
Like the day before, the police were also targeted, trash cans, cars and buses burned, especially in Villeurbanne (Rhône) or Aubervilliers (Seine-Saint-Denis).
PHOTO AURELIEN MORISSARD, ASSOCIATED PRESS
During the night from Thursday to Friday, the police made 667 arrests.
Again, public buildings were targeted, such as in Amiens where a kindergarten was partly burned down, making childcare impossible on Friday.
The fires multiplied in Roubaix (North) under the sirens of the firefighters and the searchlight of a police helicopter. “In two days, they did what the yellow vests did in two years,” commented a passerby, who refuses to give his name.
In Marseille, Mayor Benoît Payan called for “unity and calm” after incidents that affected the center of the Marseille city overnight, citing 156 trash fires, “dozens of damaged businesses, some vandalized and looted” and 14 cars burned. According to the police headquarters, there were 56 arrests and 38 police officers injured.
At the Pablo-Picasso city in Nanterre, where Nahel was from, cars were set on fire, firework mortars and other homemade grenades were fired, noted an AFP journalist. A Crédit Mutuel bank branch was set on fire.
Violence has also occurred in overseas departments, Reunion, Martinique and Guyana, according to the authorities.
The UN concerned
Since Nahel’s death on Tuesday, schools and public buildings have been the target of the anger of young residents of working-class neighborhoods and set on fire in multiple cities in France, recalling the riots that engulfed France in 2005 after the death of two teenagers chased by the police.
The tragedy at the origin of the conflagration occurred near the Nanterre-Préfecture RER station, during a police check on the car driven by Nahel, a minor known for refusing to comply.
The prosecution considers that “the legal conditions for the use of the weapon” by the policeman who fired the shot “are not met”, declared Thursday the public prosecutor of Nanterre, Pascal Prache.
This 38-year-old policeman was indicted for intentional homicide and remanded in custody on Thursday afternoon.
A video, authenticated by AFP, showed that this national police motorcyclist positioned alongside his car held Nahel at gunpoint after a chase and then fired at point-blank range.
The spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights expressed concern about the violence that erupted after Nahel’s death, while asking France to look “seriously” at the “problems of racism and racial discrimination within its law enforcement agencies”.