More than 600 people were arrested and at least 200 police officers were injured as the government struggled to restore order on a third night of unrest
Release date – Friday 23rd – 11:00pm – June 30th
Turnbull Nanterre (France): The French police shooting of a 17-year-old shocked the country and heightened tensions as protesters erected barricades in French streets overnight, setting fire to and firing fireworks at police, who responded with tear gas and water cannon.
Government efforts to restore order on a third night of unrest resulted in more than 600 arrests and at least 200 police officers injured.
In the northwestern Paris suburb of Nanterre, a police officer shot and killed the teenager, who was only named Naher, as armored police vehicles drove over the charred wreckage of an overturned and ablaze car.
On the other side of Paris, protesters set fire to the city hall in the suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois and set fire to a bus station in Aubervilliers.
In several Paris neighborhoods, groups threw firecrackers at security forces.
The police station in the city’s 12th arrondissement was attacked and some shops were looted on rue de Rivoli, near the Louvre Museum and in the Forum des Halles, the largest shopping center in central Paris.
In the Mediterranean port city of Marseille, police tried to disperse violent groups in the city center, regional authorities said.
Some 40,000 police officers were deployed to quell the protests. Police detained 667 people, according to the Minister of the Interior; 307 of these cases occurred in the Paris region alone, according to the Paris police headquarters.
About 200 police officers were injured, according to a national police spokesman. There is no information about other injuries.
Interior Minister Gerald Dalmanin condemned on Friday what he described as a night of “uncommon violence”. His office said the arrests were a sharp increase from previous ones and were part of an overall government effort to take an “extremely firm” approach to the rioters.
The government did not declare a state of emergency – a step taken to quell weeks of unrest across France after two boys escaped a police station and died unexpectedly in 2005.
French President Emmanuel Macron, who left early at an EU summit in Brussels, where France plays a key role in European policymaking, returned to Paris on Friday for an emergency security meeting.
Prosecutor Pascal Plage said his initial investigation led him to conclude “the conditions for the lawful use of a weapon were not met,” and the officer accused of pulling the trigger Tuesday was charged with manslaughter. The preliminary charges mean the investigating judge strongly suspects wrongdoing, but more investigation is needed before the case can be sent to trial.
The detained officer’s lawyer said on French television channel BFMTV that the officer was sorry and “shocked”. Attorney Laurent-Frank Leinard told the news outlet that the officer did what he thought was necessary.
“He doesn’t get up in the morning to kill,” Linard said of the officer, whose name has not been released in accordance with French criminal practice. “He really didn’t want to kill people.” The shooting on video has shocked France and stoked long-running tensions between police and young people in housing projects and other vulnerable neighbourhoods.
Naher’s mother, Mounia M., told France 5 television she was angry at the police who killed her only child, but not at the police. “He saw a little kid with Arab looks and he wanted to take his own life,” she said.
She called for justice to be “very firm”. “Police cannot pick up guns and shoot our children and take our children’s lives,” she said.
Naher’s grandmother, who has not been named, told Algerian broadcaster Ennahar TV that her family originated in Algeria.
Algeria’s foreign ministry said in a statement Thursday that there was widespread grief in the North African country.
Anti-racism activists again complained about police behavior.
“We can’t just say things need to calm down,” said Dominique Sopo, head of the SOS Racisme movement.
“The question here is how do we get our police force to not yell at black people and Arab people when they see them, not use racist They were shot in the head.”
For decades, race has been a taboo subject in France, which officially embraces the creed of colorblind universalism. But some increasingly vocal groups argue that this consensus masks widespread discrimination and racism.
Although 13 people were shot and killed by French police last year for not obeying traffic jams, there are fewer fatalities with firearms in France than in the United States.
This year, three others, including Nahel, died in similar circumstances.
The deaths have prompted calls for greater accountability in France, which has also seen protests over racial inequality following the police killing of George Floyd in Minnesota.
In Nanterre, smoke billowed from cars and litter boxes were set alight as confrontations escalated following a peaceful march in honor of Naher on Thursday afternoon.
Tensions rose across France throughout the day. The French National Police said that in Pau, a small town in the Pyrenees in southwestern France, someone threw a Molotov cocktail at the police station in the usually quiet town.
Vehicles were set on fire in Toulouse and a tram was set alight on the outskirts of Lyon, police said.
Some towns, such as Clamart on the southwestern outskirts of the French capital and Neuilly-sur-Marne on the eastern outskirts, imposed preventive nighttime curfews.
Bus and tram services in the Paris region were closed as a precaution, with many tram lines remaining closed during Friday morning rush hour.
Unrest spread to the Belgian capital Brussels, where about a dozen people were detained and multiple fires were brought under control amid scuffles related to the French shootings.
Prasch, the Nanterre prosecutor, said police tried to stop Nahel because he looked young and was driving a Mercedes with Polish plates on a bus lane. He allegedly ran a red light to avoid being pulled over and then got stuck in traffic.
Both officers said they drew guns to prevent his escape. Plage said the officer who fired the shots expressed his fear that he, his colleague or others might be hit by a car.
The scenes in the French suburbs echoed those in 2005, when the deaths of Bouna Traoré, 15, and Zyed Benna, 17, sparked three weeks of unrest and exposed people Anger and resentment over neglected housing projects.
The boys were electrocuted after evading police at a substation in Clichy-sous-Bois.
