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France riots: more than 400 arrested as police
officer accused of shooting teen apologises
Violence spreads to cities across France as officer
involved in shooting says he didn’t intend to kill driver
Guardian
staff and agencies
Fri 30 Jun
2023 04.48 BST
More than
400 people have been arrested across France, officials said, as unrest spread
to major cities during a third night of riots triggered by the deadly police
shooting of a teenager of Algerian and Moroccan descent during a traffic stop.
At least
three towns around Paris, including Clamart, Compiègne and Neuilly-sur-Marne,
imposed full or partial night-time curfews as a police intelligence report
leaked to French media predicted “widespread urban violence over the coming
nights”.
A lawyer
for the officer accused of shooting the 17-year-old known as Nahel M in
Nanterre, a suburb west of central Paris, said he had offered an apology to the
teen’s family.
“The first
words he pronounced were to say sorry and the last words he said were to say
sorry to the family,” Laurent-Franck Lienard told BFMTV. “He is devastated, he
doesn’t get up in the morning to kill people.”
Lienard
said the officer had aimed down towards the driver’s leg but was bumped,
causing him to shoot towards his chest. “He had to be stopped, but obviously
[the officer] didn’t want to kill the driver,” he said, adding that his
client’s detention was being used to try to calm rioters.
The
38-year-old officer was on Thursday placed under formal investigation for
voluntary homicide, the equivalent in Anglo-Saxon jurisdictions of being
charged.
Nanterre public
prosecutor Pascal Prache said on Thursday that Nahel died from a single shot
through his left arm and chest while driving off after being stopped by police.
The officer said he had opened fire because he feared that he and his colleague
or someone else could be hit by the car, according to Prache.
“The public
prosecutor considers that the legal conditions for using the weapon have not
been met,” Prache said.
Nahel was
known to police for previously failing to comply with traffic stop orders,
Prache said.
Local media
reported that 420 people had been arrested as of 3.30am on Friday, citing
figures from the Interior Ministry, after 40,000 police officers were deployed
across the country – nearly four times the numbers mobilised on Wednesday.
Interior
minister Gérald Darmanin, who called for “support for our police, gendarmes and
firefighters who are doing a brave job”, was pictured by French media at police
headquarters in Paris in the early hours of Friday.
In
Nanterre, protesters torched cars, barricaded streets and hurled projectiles at
police after a peaceful vigil and march led by Nahel’s mother descended into
violence.
Protesters
scrawled “Vengeance for Nahel” across buildings and as night set in a bank was
set on fire before firefighters put it out and an elite police unit deployed an
armoured vehicle.
As the night
advanced violent skirmishes between rioters and police also broke out in Lille,
Toulouse, Marseille, Lyon, Pau and Montpellier.
In central
Paris, Nike and Zara stores were vandalised and looted, Le Monde reported, with
14 arrests made. Further arrests were made after shop windows were smashed
along the famous rue de Rivoli shopping street.
In
Montreuil, an eastern suburb, hundreds of youths attacked shops including a
pharmacy and a McDonalds, while bins were set on fire outside the town hall.
Police fired teargas in response.
In the
western city of Nantes, a car was driven into through the metal barriers of a
Lidl store, which was subsequently also looted, Le Parisien reported.
In
Vaulx-en-Velin, a suburb of the eastern city of Lyon, youths maintained a
“constant and heavy barrage” of fireworks at police, local media reported,
while a dozen cars were set alight in Sevran, north-east of Paris.
Videos on
social media showed numerous fires across the country, including at a bus depot
in a suburb north of Paris and a tram in Lyon.
In the
north-eastern city of Lille, the city hall said there was “lots of looting” of
shops and supermarkets.
A district
hall in the district of Wazemmes and an elementary school in Moulins were set
on fire, while in the nearby municipality of Roubaix firefighters dashed from
blaze to blaze throughout the night, AFP reported, with buildings set alight
including a hotel, a large office building and social centre .
In
Marseille, France’s second city, police fired teargas grenades during clashes
with youths in the tourist hotspot of Le Vieux Port, the city’s main paper La
Provence reported.
At least 10
people were also arrested in two Brussels neighbourhoods after rioting that
police blamed on the shooting.
President
Emmanuel Macron had held a morning crisis meeting on Thursday with senior
ministers after the second night of unrest and rioting across France. “The last
few hours have been marked by scenes of violence against police stations but
also schools and town halls, and thus institutions of the republic – and these
scenes are wholly unjustifiable,” Macron said.
On
Wednesday he had also called for calm, saying Nahel’s death was “unexplainable
and inexcusable”. His remarks were unusually frank in a country where senior
politicians are often reluctant to criticise police, given voters’ security
concerns.
Rights
groups allege systemic racism within law enforcement agencies, a charge Macron
has previously denied. “We have to go beyond saying that things need to calm
down,” said Dominique Sopo, head of the campaign group SOS Racisme.
With Reuters and AFP
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