N.Palazzolo June 30, 2023
Tensions are rising in France, where violent protests have been raging in the banlieues for days following the death of 17-year-old Nahel, who was shot dead by a police officer in Nanterre, a Paris suburb.
President Emmanuel Macron called the boy’s death “inexplicable and unjustified”, as did his Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin. The situation escalated within a few hours. Guerrilla scenes in several parts of the country with dozens of burning cars, barricades, even the attack with firecracker rockets against a maximum security prison. In Nanterre in particular, a bank was set on fire after the end of the “white march” for Nahel, which was marked by serious incidents. Dozens of police officers were injured.
According to Le Figaro, twelve people have been arrested in Marseille after the incidents and looting around the Vieux-Port. In Toulouse there are currently 13 arrested after the riots. In Ile-de-France, the Paris region, there are said to have been at least 50 arrests, 19 of them on the sidelines of the white march commemorating Nahel. There were also numerous incidents in Lyon and the region. A bus was set on fire in Bron. According to the local newspaper Le Progres, three arrests were made.
Violent clashes between the police and demonstrators also broke out in Strasbourg late Thursday evening.
Tensions are also being felt in the political buildings, as ministers have canceled all their planned trips until further notice and the fiery statements by Justice Minister Eric-Dupond Moretti against those who “spit on the police and the judiciary”, accusing them of being “moral accomplices” to the tensions.
The video shows the police officer shooting the 17-year-old
Police initially said the boy’s vehicle tried to run over the officers, but video circulating on social media shows one of the officers pointing his gun at the young man. When he left, he fired. The officer can be heard screaming: “I’ll shoot you in the head.” Nahel crashed into a pole after being hit in the chest, the video leaves no doubt.
Nahel’s mother: “He wanted to take his own life”
“I’m not angry with the police, I’m just angry with one person: the one who took my son’s life,” said Nahel’s mother Mounia M. in an interview broadcast on France 5 on Thursday evening. “I have police friends and their hearts are close to me (…). I don’t agree with what he did,” said Mounia M. on the show “C a’ vous”. “He shouldn’t kill my son, there were other options. A ball? So close to his torso? No, I can’t imagine that (…). There are other ways to get them out.” The vehicle. Killing little kids like that… How much longer will this all go on? How many more children will go?” he said in his first lengthy speech after the tragedy. And again the policeman “saw the head of an Arab, the head of a child, and wanted to take his life,” says the woman. Then the hope that the courts would be “very strict” towards the police officer: “Not six months and then out”.
The police officer’s defense: “He didn’t want to kill”
The police officer was arrested after two days in detention and is officially under investigation for premeditated homicide. During the first interrogations, he again tried to defend himself, saying he was “afraid” of being hit by the car, an explanation that seems incomprehensible given that he was next to the vehicle and not in front of it.
The lawyer speaks for him. “He didn’t want to kill,” Laurent-Franck Lienard tells Bfmtv. The attorney says the officer was “moved by the death of this young man. The first words he said were to say forgiveness and the last words he said were to forgive the family.” The lawyer added, “He’s devastated, he doesn’t get up in the morning, to kill people.”
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