Riots: Aimène's lawyer, in a coma, requests a change of scenery for the judicial information

The lawyer for a young man seriously injured one evening of riots in June in Mont-Saint-Martin (Meurthe-et-Moselle), according to his family by a projectile fired by the police intervention unit, the RAID, indicated Tuesday, August 1 to Agence France-Presse (AFP) to have requested the change of scenery of the judicial information.

In his letter to the Nancy prosecutor, Me Yassine Bouzrou justifies in particular this request for expatriation by the refusal of the investigating judges to give him access to the file. Me Bouzrou is the lawyer for the mother of Aimène Bahouh, a 25-year-old man who is still in a coma after being injured in the head on June 30.

According to a member of Mr. Bahouh’s family, the latter was traveling by car, window open, “to go and refuel at the gas pump in Luxembourg”, when he “received a projectile from the RAID, of the bean bag type on the temple”.

“The RAID agent who carried out the shooting has necessarily been identified to date by the general inspectorate of the national police, but to our knowledge he has still not been indicted”, writes Me Bouzrou in his letter.

The IGPN quickly seized

For the lawyer, “the refusal of the investigating magistrates to investigate this file and to communicate to the civil parties the elements of the file demonstrates a hostility which can only be explained by a concern for the protection of the police officer who has committed an offense extremely serious”. He adds that the RAID is based in Nancy, justifying that the procedure be referred to another court.

In this case, the Val-de-Briey prosecutor’s office had quickly seized the IGPN of the facts of violence with a weapon by a person holding public authority.

The Val-de-Briey prosecutor’s office had withdrawn, in view of the “complexity of the facts”, in favor of that of Nancy and a judicial investigation had been opened.

“Bean bags” are “believed to be less lethal and should not cause penetrating injuries when used at appropriate distances,” according to a University of Texas study published in September 2020 by the New England Journal of Medicine. But they “can cause serious harm and are not appropriate for use in crowd control,” argue the academics.