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The French police officer who killed a 17-year-old driver who evaded a traffic stop in a Paris suburb is under formal investigation for “voluntary manslaughter” and will soon appear in court. – investigate.
“Due to the investigation so far and the information collected, the prosecutors believe that the legal conditions for the use of the weapon were not met,” Pascal Prache, the prosecutor of Nanterre where the incident took place, said in a press conference on Thursday.
Prache said he has requested that the unnamed officer who shot the teenager be placed in pre-trial detention, although that decision will be made by investigating judges, who will also determine whether charges will be filed.
A formal investigation was announced after authorities questioned a passenger traveling in the teenager’s car and the two police officers involved in the incident. The officers both said they feared the vehicle posed a threat to themselves and others.
France was outraged after the killing of the driver, named Naël, who was driving without a license when he sped away from police at a traffic stop. The death of the teenager, who is from North Africa, has sparked outrage in various ethnic areas outside the French capital and elsewhere where it is seen as another example of police brutality.
Clashes broke out for a second night on Wednesday and protesters burned cars, built barricades, and clashed with police. The riots started in Nanterre and around Paris but overnight spread to other cities and smaller towns. About 150 people were arrested with 2,000 police officers deployed across the country.
Mayors from smaller towns and suburbs, including near Lille in northern France and Dijon in the east, reported incidents of people setting fire to government buildings. A local court in Asnières was set on fire and a police investigation was opened.
French president Emmanuel Macron called a crisis meeting of ministers on Thursday morning.
“The past few hours have been marked by scenes of violence against police stations but also against schools, town halls and finally against institutions and the republic, and this is absolutely unjustified,” said Macron as he opened the meeting in the interior. ministry in Paris.
He added that a planned march called for Thursday afternoon by the teenager’s grieving mother, who has appeared in several videos on social media since the shooting, should be a moment of reflection and calm.
The posting of a video filmed by a viewer on social media almost immediately after the shooting raised the stakes and the emotional reaction. It appears to show the police officer shooting through the driver’s side window as the car drives away, despite no indication of any immediate danger to him or the second officer.
Lawyers for Naël’s family called the shooting an “execution” and said they would prosecute the two officers involved.
Macron earlier called the teenager’s death “inexplicable and unforgivable”.
The interior minister said 40,000 police officers would be deployed across the country by Thursday night to try to quell the unrest, including 5,000 for the Paris region.
The government was on high alert because a similar incident in 2005 erupted into three weeks of protests. Two teenagers, Zyed Benna and Bouna Traoré, died while running from the police in Clichy-sous-Bois, another low-income suburb of Paris.
The movement became a broader critique of the long-standing problems of high unemployment and crime plaguing low-income communities around Paris. Such areas are inhabited by many immigrants and their descendants, who face discrimination in work and housing despite being French citizens, according to government studies.
Politicians from different political parties seized on the shooting of the teenage driver.
Leftwing leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon reiterated his frequent criticism of heavy-handed police tactics. Far-right leader Marine Le Pen criticized Macron for jumping to conclusions before the investigation into the events had been completed, while the head of her party, Jordan Bardella, defended the police who were dealing with “a a climate of violence”.
Thirteen people died in France last year after refusing to stop at police traffic controls, compared to seven in 2021, although the total number of stops also increased, according to figures from police Some died because they were shot by the police and others because of accidents when they ran away.
