More than just a news item, the death of Nahel, killed by a policeman during a traffic check, has become a social and political fact. For several days, many neighborhoods all over France were ablaze. Faced with this rise in violence, which has gradually faded, Emmanuel Macron spoke during a trip to Pau this Thursday, July 6. The President of the Republic announced that he wanted to continue working on the demands of the districts, while ensuring that “the first response is order and calm, harmony”.
“We have returned to more or less a normal situation,” rejoiced the Prime Minister, visiting Lisieux (Calvados), in a district victim of degradation and looting. “We need to understand, to take the time to diagnose,” added Elisabeth Borne, criticizing the “simplistic” analyzes of the right and the far right which attribute the violence to poorly controlled immigration.
In Versailles, the investigating chamber of the court of appeal decided to keep the policeman who shot Nahel, 17, in pre-trial detention, whose death on June 27 in Nanterre set the country ablaze. This 38-year-old biker, Florian M., was indicted for intentional homicide and imprisoned on June 29. His continued imprisonment is “totally hopeless” for him, said his lawyer, Me Laurent-Franck Liénard, referring to BFMTV as a new “nightmare”.
According to a summary of the investigation obtained by AFP, Florian M. said he fired “to prevent (the teenager) from knocking down someone or boarding (his) colleague” by restarting his vehicle, stopped for a traffic check. He also denied saying “any words containing the potentially audible words ‘head shot'” on the video taken by a bystander.
This recording contradicted the first report of the intervention, which ensured that the policeman was “in front of the vehicle” and that Nahel had “tried to go back by rushing on the official”, according to this summary. The anger caused by the publication of these images on social networks spread like wildfire in many cities of the country, causing several successive nights of clashes between rioters and police, burning of cars, ransacking of public buildings and looting.
The return to calm was confirmed overnight from Wednesday to Thursday with 20 arrests, according to the Ministry of the Interior. The General Inspectorate of the National Police (IGPN) and its counterpart for the gendarmerie, the IGGN, have been seized of 10 investigations into the actions of the police, according to the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin. One of these investigations concerns the serious head injury suffered by a young man, in a coma, in Mont-Saint-Martin (Meurthe-et-Moselle), where the Raid police intervened on June 30.
Nahel’s death and the urban violence that followed cast a harsh light on the ills of French society, from the difficulties of working-class neighborhoods to the stormy relations between young people and the police. The political class is deeply divided on these issues.
On France 2, Marine Le Pen (RN) estimated Thursday that these riots did not come from a “social problem” or “poverty”, noting that “hundreds of thousands” of modest parents educated their children “correctly” .
On the left, La France insoumise (LFI) called, along with other organizations, for “citizen marches” on Saturday to demand police reform and social treatment of the suburbs.
Arguing the risk of “public order disturbances”, the Val-d’Oise prefecture said it “considers” banning the annual march scheduled for Saturday in memory of Adama Traoré, a 24-year-old black man. died on July 19, 2016 after his arrest by the gendarmes.