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NANTRERE: Protesters erected barricades, set fires and fired firecrackers at police who responded with tear gas and water cannons on French streets overnight as tensions rose over the police shooting of a 17-year-old that shocked the nation. More than 600 people were arrested and at least 200 police officers were injured as the government struggled to restore order in a third night of unrest.
Armored police cars crashed into the charred remains of cars that were overturned and engulfed in flames in the northwest Paris The suburb of Nanterre, where a young man who was identified only by his first name, Nael, was shot by a police officer. On the other side of Paris, protesters set the town hall on fire in the Clichy-sous-Bois suburb and set a bus stop ablaze in Aubervilliers.
In several districts of Paris, groups of people threw firecrackers at the security forces. The police station in the city’s 12th district was attacked, while some shops along the Rue Rivoli, near the Louvre Museum, and in the Forum de Halle, the largest shopping center in central Paris, were looted.
In the Mediterranean city of Marseille, regional authorities said, police sought to disperse violent groups in the city centre.
About 40,000 police were deployed to quell the protests. The interior minister said the police had arrested 667 people. The Paris police station reported that 307 of these were in the Paris region alone.
About 200 police officers were injured, according to a national police spokesman. No information was provided about injuries among the rest of the population.
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin on Friday denounced what he called a night of “rare violence”. His office described the arrests as a sharp increase from previous operations as part of an overall government effort to be “very tough” on rioters.
The government stopped short of declaring a state of emergency – a measure taken to quell weeks of rioting across France that followed the accidental death of two children while fleeing police in 2005.
president Emmanuel Macron He left early for the EU summit in Brussels, where France plays a key role in European policy-making, to return to Paris for an emergency security meeting on Friday.
The police officer accused of pulling the trigger was handed a preliminary charge of first-degree murder after prosecutor Pascal Brach said his initial investigation led him to conclude “the conditions for the lawful use of the weapon were not met.” Preliminary charges mean that the investigating judges strongly suspect wrongdoing but they need to investigate further before the case can be sent to trial.
The detained police officer’s lawyer, speaking on French television channel BFMTV, said the officer was sorry and “heartbroken”. Lawyer Laurent-Frank Lenard said the officer did what he thought was necessary for the time being.
“He doesn’t get up in the morning to kill people,” Lenard said of the officer, whose name was not released in accordance with French practice in criminal cases. He really didn’t want to kill.
The shooting caught on video shocked France and sparked long-running tensions between the police and youth in housing projects and other disadvantaged neighborhoods.
Nahil’s mother, identified as Monia M, told France 5 television that she was angry at the officer who killed her only child, but not at the police in general. She said, “He saw a little boy of Arab appearance, who wanted to commit suicide.”
She called for justice to be “very firm”.
She said, “A police officer cannot take his gun and shoot our children, or take our children’s lives.”
Nhil’s grandmother, who did not reveal her name, told Algeria’s An-Nahar television that her family had roots in Algeria.
Algeria’s foreign ministry said in a statement Thursday that grief is widespread in the North African country.
Anti-racism activists renewed complaints about police behaviour.
“We have to move beyond saying things need to calm down,” said Dominique Sopo, head of campaign group SOS Racisme. “The issue here is how can we make it happen so that we have a police force so that when they see blacks and Arabs, you are not tempted to yell at them, use racist terms against them and, in some cases, shoot them in the head.”
Race has been a taboo subject for decades in France, and it is officially committed to the universal doctrine of colorblindness. But some increasingly vocal groups claim that this consensus masks widespread discrimination and racism.
Fatal use of firearms is less common in France than in the United States, although 13 people who failed to comply with a traffic stop were shot dead by French police last year. This year, three more people, including Nael, died under similar circumstances. These deaths have prompted calls for greater accountability in France, which has also seen protests against racial injustice after the killing of George Floyd by police in Minnesota.
And in Nanterre, a peaceful rally Thursday afternoon in honor of Nahil was followed by escalating confrontations, with smoke billowing from cars and rubbish bins ablaze.
Tensions ran high in places across France throughout the day. In the town of Pau, located in the normally calm Pyrenees mountains in southwestern France, the national police said a Molotov cocktail was thrown at a police office. Police said cars were set on fire in Toulouse and a tram was set on fire in a suburb of Lyon. And some towns, such as Clamart in the southwestern suburbs of the French capital and Nolly-sur-Marne in the eastern suburbs, imposed a precautionary curfew during the night.
Bus and tram services were closed in the Paris region as a precaution, and many tram lines remained closed during rush hour on Friday morning.
The unrest spread to the Belgian capital, Brussels, where about a dozen people were arrested during quarrels related to fire in France, and several fires were brought under control.
The prosecutor in Nanterre, Brach, said officers tried to stop Nahil because he looked very young and was driving a Mercedes with Polish license plates into a bus lane. He was alleged to have run a red light to avoid the stop and then got stuck in traffic.
Both officers said they drew their guns to prevent him from fleeing. The officer who fired the shot said he feared the car might hit him and his colleague or someone else, according to Brash.
Scenes reverberated in the French suburbs in 2005, when the deaths of 15-year-old Bona Traoré and 17-year-old Zed Binh led to three weeks of rioting, exposing anger and resentment over neglected housing projects. The boys were electrocuted after hiding from the police at an electricity substation in Clichy-sous-Bois.
Armored police cars crashed into the charred remains of cars that were overturned and engulfed in flames in the northwest Paris The suburb of Nanterre, where a young man who was identified only by his first name, Nael, was shot by a police officer. On the other side of Paris, protesters set the town hall on fire in the Clichy-sous-Bois suburb and set a bus stop ablaze in Aubervilliers.
In several districts of Paris, groups of people threw firecrackers at the security forces. The police station in the city’s 12th district was attacked, while some shops along the Rue Rivoli, near the Louvre Museum, and in the Forum de Halle, the largest shopping center in central Paris, were looted.
In the Mediterranean city of Marseille, regional authorities said, police sought to disperse violent groups in the city centre.
About 40,000 police were deployed to quell the protests. The interior minister said the police had arrested 667 people. The Paris police station reported that 307 of these were in the Paris region alone.
About 200 police officers were injured, according to a national police spokesman. No information was provided about injuries among the rest of the population.
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin on Friday denounced what he called a night of “rare violence”. His office described the arrests as a sharp increase from previous operations as part of an overall government effort to be “very tough” on rioters.
The government stopped short of declaring a state of emergency – a measure taken to quell weeks of rioting across France that followed the accidental death of two children while fleeing police in 2005.
president Emmanuel Macron He left early for the EU summit in Brussels, where France plays a key role in European policy-making, to return to Paris for an emergency security meeting on Friday.
The police officer accused of pulling the trigger was handed a preliminary charge of first-degree murder after prosecutor Pascal Brach said his initial investigation led him to conclude “the conditions for the lawful use of the weapon were not met.” Preliminary charges mean that the investigating judges strongly suspect wrongdoing but they need to investigate further before the case can be sent to trial.
The detained police officer’s lawyer, speaking on French television channel BFMTV, said the officer was sorry and “heartbroken”. Lawyer Laurent-Frank Lenard said the officer did what he thought was necessary for the time being.
“He doesn’t get up in the morning to kill people,” Lenard said of the officer, whose name was not released in accordance with French practice in criminal cases. He really didn’t want to kill.
The shooting caught on video shocked France and sparked long-running tensions between the police and youth in housing projects and other disadvantaged neighborhoods.
Nahil’s mother, identified as Monia M, told France 5 television that she was angry at the officer who killed her only child, but not at the police in general. She said, “He saw a little boy of Arab appearance, who wanted to commit suicide.”
She called for justice to be “very firm”.
She said, “A police officer cannot take his gun and shoot our children, or take our children’s lives.”
Nhil’s grandmother, who did not reveal her name, told Algeria’s An-Nahar television that her family had roots in Algeria.
Algeria’s foreign ministry said in a statement Thursday that grief is widespread in the North African country.
Anti-racism activists renewed complaints about police behaviour.
“We have to move beyond saying things need to calm down,” said Dominique Sopo, head of campaign group SOS Racisme. “The issue here is how can we make it happen so that we have a police force so that when they see blacks and Arabs, you are not tempted to yell at them, use racist terms against them and, in some cases, shoot them in the head.”
Race has been a taboo subject for decades in France, and it is officially committed to the universal doctrine of colorblindness. But some increasingly vocal groups claim that this consensus masks widespread discrimination and racism.
Fatal use of firearms is less common in France than in the United States, although 13 people who failed to comply with a traffic stop were shot dead by French police last year. This year, three more people, including Nael, died under similar circumstances. These deaths have prompted calls for greater accountability in France, which has also seen protests against racial injustice after the killing of George Floyd by police in Minnesota.
And in Nanterre, a peaceful rally Thursday afternoon in honor of Nahil was followed by escalating confrontations, with smoke billowing from cars and rubbish bins ablaze.
Tensions ran high in places across France throughout the day. In the town of Pau, located in the normally calm Pyrenees mountains in southwestern France, the national police said a Molotov cocktail was thrown at a police office. Police said cars were set on fire in Toulouse and a tram was set on fire in a suburb of Lyon. And some towns, such as Clamart in the southwestern suburbs of the French capital and Nolly-sur-Marne in the eastern suburbs, imposed a precautionary curfew during the night.
Bus and tram services were closed in the Paris region as a precaution, and many tram lines remained closed during rush hour on Friday morning.
The unrest spread to the Belgian capital, Brussels, where about a dozen people were arrested during quarrels related to fire in France, and several fires were brought under control.
The prosecutor in Nanterre, Brach, said officers tried to stop Nahil because he looked very young and was driving a Mercedes with Polish license plates into a bus lane. He was alleged to have run a red light to avoid the stop and then got stuck in traffic.
Both officers said they drew their guns to prevent him from fleeing. The officer who fired the shot said he feared the car might hit him and his colleague or someone else, according to Brash.
Scenes reverberated in the French suburbs in 2005, when the deaths of 15-year-old Bona Traoré and 17-year-old Zed Binh led to three weeks of rioting, exposing anger and resentment over neglected housing projects. The boys were electrocuted after hiding from the police at an electricity substation in Clichy-sous-Bois.
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