The police officer accused of pulling the trigger during Tuesday’s incident faces a preliminary charge of voluntary manslaughter after prosecutor Pascal Prache said his initial investigation led him to the conclusion that “the conditions for the legal use of the weapon were not met.” ”.
Despite the government’s call for calm and its promises to restore order, protesters set fire to vehicles and garbage in Nanterre, a suburb of Paris, after a peaceful march Thursday afternoon in honor of the teenager, identified only with his first name: Nahel.
After a morning meeting to address the crisis following acts of violence that left large numbers of police officers injured and nearly 100 public buildings damaged, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said the number of officers on the streets would rise. from 9,000 to 40,000. In the Paris region alone it would more than double to 5,000.
“Clutter professionals need to come home,” Darmanin declared. He added that while there is not yet a need to declare a state of emergency — a measure that was put in place to appease the country after several weeks of unrest in 2005 — “the state’s response will be extremely strong.”
Police reported scattered but apparently limited acts of violence on Thursday night, when the deployment of more officers was visible on the streets. In the normally quiet town of Pau, in southwestern France, a Molotov cocktail was thrown at a new police office, the national police said. Vehicles were set on fire in Toulouse, as well as a tram car in a Lyon suburb, police said. The national police did not have an updated number of arrests across the country, but Paris police said their officers made 40 arrests on Thursday, some on the sidelines of the largely peaceful march in memory of the teenager and others elsewhere. The interior minister had reported 180 arrests across the country by Thursday.
Bus and tram services in the Paris metropolitan area were suspended before sunset as a preventive measure to safeguard passengers and transport workers.
The town of Clamart, a southwestern suburb of Paris with around 54,000 inhabitants, declared that it would take the extraordinary measure of implementing a night curfew from Thursday to Monday, citing “the risk of further disturbances to public order.” . The mayor of Neuilly-sur-Marne announced a similar measure.
Marseille, a port city in the south of France, registered the first signs of discontent on Thursday afternoon, when several hundred youths wandered through the city center and set fire to rubbish bins, including some in front of the main government building in the city. region, police said. The agents dispersed the nearly 400 people who had gathered, authorities added. Three people were arrested and one officer was injured.
The riots spread to Brussels, where a dozen people were arrested during altercations related to the death of the young man in France. Several fires were extinguished and at least one car was burned, said Ilse Van de Keere, a police spokeswoman.
The teen’s death, which was caught on video, shocked the country and stirred longstanding tensions between police and youth from lower-class neighborhoods.
The teen’s family and their lawyers have not said the incident with the police officer was race-related, nor did they release his last name or details about him.
However, his death instantly inflamed tensions in neighborhoods that have welcomed generations of immigrants from the former French colonies and elsewhere. Their French-born children often complain that they are subjected to police checks much more frequently than whites or more affluent neighborhood dwellers.
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Corbet and Leicester reported from Paris. Associated Press journalists Oleg Cetinic, Christophe Ena and Jeffrey Schaeffer, in Nanterre; Angela Charlton, in Paris; and Brian Melley, in London, contributed to this report.
FUENTE: Associated Press
