This brings to four the number of proceedings concerning demonstrators injured on March 25 during violent clashes with the police during a prohibited demonstration in Sainte-Soline, in Deux-Sèvres. Two new complaints were filed on Monday, the Rennes prosecutor announced on Tuesday April 4.
These two new complaints relate to a man born in 1995, who suffers from “trauma to the left foot with bone crashing which he attributes to a disencirclement grenade”, with an ITT set at a minimum of sixty days, and a woman born in 2003, with “very significant facial polytrauma and leg injuries” whose ITT is provisionally set at one hundred days, said Philippe Astruc during a press conference.
The Rennes public prosecutor’s office is competent for military matters, and as such has been responsible for these investigations involving a priori the gendarmes.
“Precisely determine the origin of the injuries observed”
Regarding the two men seriously injured during the prohibited demonstration, the vital prognosis of the 34-year-old “remains engaged” while the 32-year-old “would have come out of a coma and would have completed his recovery phase”, added the prosecutor of Rennes, which seized the general inspection of the national gendarmerie to carry out the investigations. And to clarify:
“If I favor a prosecution investigation for the time being, I do not rule out the opening of a judicial investigation in a second stage. (…) The qualifications retained at this stage are aggravated violence with an ITT of more than eight days per person holding public authority and non-assistance to a person in danger. »
The first stage of the investigations will be to “precisely determine the origin of the injuries observed” and then to establish “the possible causal link between the action of the gendarmes and these injuries”, he added. The prosecutor asked that “all the squadron leaders” present in Sainte-Soline be heard.
Mr. Astruc proceeded to seize the recordings of the conversations and the videos of the gendarmerie, he also launched an appeal for witnesses so that “direct witnesses can make themselves known” and he invited “those with videos or photos to communicate a copy”.
The rally on March 25 around the disputed basin of Sainte-Soline, which attracted between 6,000 and 30,000 people, gave rise to violent clashes between demonstrators and the police.
