Looters break into gun shop as almost 1,000 arrested in France riots

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Written by northsouth

Category: Europe

Published: 01 July 2023

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MARSEILLE, FRANCE - Looters broke into a gun shop in Marseille as hundreds of people were arrested on the fourth night of rioting in France triggered by the fatal police shooting of a 17-year-old boy.

Violence erupted across the country on Tuesday night when delivery driver Nahel M, 17, was shot by an officer during a traffic stop.

The French government ordered 45,000 police onto the streets and bus and tram services had to stop at 9pm after 994 people were arrested on Friday night.

The French interior ministry said 79 police officers were injured during clashes with rioters.

Police said looters broke into a gun shop in Marseille and made off with several hunting rifles. One person was arrested at a nearby location with one of the weapons, officers said.

Benoit Payan, the mayor of Marseille, urged the government to send additional troops to the city amid the “pillaging and violence”.

Violent clashes were also reported in other cities including Lyon, Paris and Strasbourg.

It came as British holidaymakers were warned about travelling to France amid fears that nationwide curfews will be imposed.

The Foreign Office warned travellers of potential disruption.

A statement said: “Riots have taken place across France. Shops, public buildings and parked cars have been targeted.

“There may be disruptions to road travel and local transport provision may be reduced. Some local authorities may impose curfews.

“Locations and timing of riots are unpredictable. You should monitor the media, avoid where riots are taking place, check the latest advice with operators when travelling and follow the advice of the authorities.”

France’s interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, ordered a complete shutdown of all public bus and tram services which took effect before sunset yesterday.

Over 600 arrested on France’s protests over teen’s killing

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Written by northsouth

Category: Europe

Published: 30 June 2023

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By SYLVIE CORBET, JOHN LEICESTER and ALEX TURNBULL

PARIS - Protesters erected barricades, lit fires and shot fireworks at police who responded with tear gas and water cannons in French streets overnight as tensions grew over the deadly police shooting of a 17-year-old that has shocked the nation. More than 600 people were arrested and at least 200 police officers injured as the government struggled to restore order on a third night of unrest.

Armored police vehicles rammed through the charred remains of cars that had been flipped and set ablaze in the northwestern Paris suburb of Nanterre, where a police officer shot the teen identified only by his first name, Nahel. On the other side of Paris, protesters lit a fire at the city hall of the suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois and set a bus depot ablaze in Aubervilliers.

In several Paris neighborhoods, groups of people hurled firecrackers at security forces. The police station in the city’s 12th district was attacked, while some shops were looted along Rivoli street, near the Louvre museum, and at the Forum des Halles, the largest shopping mall in central Paris.

In the Mediterranean port city of Marseille, police sought to disperse violent groups in the city center, regional authorities said.

President Emmanuel Macron planned to leave an EU summit in Brussels, where France plays a major role in European policymaking, to return to Paris and hold an emergency security meeting Friday.

Some 40,000 police officers were deployed to quell the protests. Police detained 667 people, the interior minister said; 307 of those were in the Paris region alone, according to the Paris police headquarters.

Around 200 police officers were injured, according to a national police spokesperson. No information was available about injuries among the rest of the population.

Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin on Friday denounced what he called a night of “rare violence.” His office described the arrests as a sharp increase on previous operations as part of an overall government efforts to be “extremely firm” with rioters.

The government has stopped short of declaring a state of emergency — a measure taken to quell weeks of rioting around France that followed the accidental death of two boys fleeing police in 2005.

The police officer accused of pulling the trigger Tuesday was handed a preliminary charge of voluntary homicide after prosecutor Pascal Prache said his initial investigation led him to conclude “the conditions for the legal use of the weapon were not met.” Preliminary charges mean investigating magistrates strongly suspect wrongdoing but need to investigate more before sending a case to trial.

The detained police officer’s lawyer, speaking on French TV channel BFMTV, said the officer was sorry and “devastated.” The officer did what he thought was necessary in the moment, attorney Laurent-Franck Lienard told the news outlet.

“He doesn’t get up in the morning to kill people,” Lienard said of the officer, whose name has not been released as per French practice in criminal cases. “He really didn’t want to kill.”

The shooting captured on video shocked France and stirred up long-simmering tensions between police and young people in housing projects and other disadvantaged neighborhoods.

The teenager’s family and their lawyers haven’t said the police shooting was race-related and they didn’t release his surname or details about him.

Still, anti-racism activists renewed complaints about police behavior.

“We have to go beyond saying that things need to calm down,” said Dominique Sopo, head of the campaign group SOS Racisme. “The issue here is how do we make it so that we have a police force that when they see Blacks and Arabs, don’t tend to shout at them, use racist terms against them and in some cases, shoot them in the head.”

Race was a taboo topic for decades in France, which is officially committed to a doctrine of colorblind universalism. But some increasingly vocal groups argue that this consensus conceals widespread discrimination and racism.

Deadly use of firearms is less common in France than in the United States, although 13 people who didn’t comply with traffic stops were fatally shot by French police last year. This year, another three people, including Nahel, have died under similar circumstances. The deaths have prompted demands for more accountability in France, which also saw protests against racial injustice after George Floyd’s killing by police in Minnesota.

In Nanterre, a peaceful march Thursday afternoon in honor of Nahel was followed by escalating confrontations, with smoke billowing from cars and garbage bins set ablaze.

Tensions rose in places across France throughout the day. In the usually tranquil Pyrenees town of Pau in southwestern France, a Molotov cocktail was thrown at a police office, national police said. Vehicles were set on fire in Toulouse and a tramway train was torched in a suburb of Lyon, police said. Some towns, such as Clamart on the French capital’s southwest suburbs and Neuilly-sur-Marne in the eastern suburbs, imposed precautionary overnight curfews.

Bus and tram services in the Paris area shut as a precaution, and many tram lines remained shut for Friday morning rush hour.

The unrest extended as far as Belgium’s capital Brussels, where about a dozen people were detained during scuffles related to the shooting in France and several fires were brought under control.

Prache, the Nanterre prosecutor, said officers tried to stop Nahel because he looked so young and was driving a Mercedes with Polish license plates in a bus lane. He allegedly ran a red light to avoid being stopped then got stuck in traffic.

Both officers said they drew their guns to prevent him from fleeing. The officer who fired the shot said he feared he and his colleague or someone else could be hit by the car, according to Prache.

The scenes in France’s suburbs echoed 2005, when the deaths of 15-year-old Bouna Traoré and 17-year-old Zyed Benna led to three weeks of riots, exposing anger and resentment in neglected housing projects. The boys were electrocuted after hiding from police in a power substation in Clichy-sous-Bois.

Protesters clash with police in Paris suburb after teenager shot dead by officer’

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Written by northsouth

Category: Europe

Published: 28 June 2023

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PARIS - Protesters armed with fireworks clashed with riot police in a Paris suburb overnight after a 17-year-old man was shot dead by police during a traffic stop.

Thirty-one people were arrested in the clashes in which 40 cars were burned, mostly in Nanterre, the Paris suburb where the victim was from, the interior minister Gerald Darmanin said on Wednesday.

Video footage showed at least one building on fire and burnt-out barricades on the road. Sporadic clashes broke out between youths and police. Some groups set alight barricades and garbage bins, smashed up a bus stop and threw firecrackers toward police, who responded with tear gas and dispersion grenades.

Mr Darmanin called for calm on BFMTV on Wednesday morning and said "justice must be done and the truth must be told." Some 2,000 police have been mobilised in the region, he said.

Prosecutors have opened a homicide investigation and Mr Darmanin said that the police officer involved in the shooting would be suspended from his duties if the charges against him were brought forward.

Paris police chief Laurent Nunez told BFMTV that "this act raises questions for me" and that the justice system would decide whether or not it was appropriate.

The two officers who carried out the traffic stop, aged between 38 and 40, were experienced, Mr Darmanin said.

A video shared on social media, verified by Reuters, shows two police officers beside the car, a Mercedes AMG, with one shooting as the driver pulled away. A passenger in the car was briefly detained and released, and police are searching for another passenger who fled.

Local resident and anti-racism campaigner, Mornia Labssi, who said she had spoken to the victim's family, said his name was Nael and that he was of Algerian origin.

A lawyer for Nael's family, Yassine Bouzrou, told The Associated Press they want the investigation handed to a different region because they fear Nanterre investigators won't be impartial. In a statement, the team of three lawyers representing the family rejected a reported statement by the police suggesting that officers' lives were in danger because the driver had threatened to run them over.

The government will hold a security meeting on Wednesday afternoon to discuss the next steps, Mr Darmanin said.

French actor Omar Sy expressed his support for the family of the victim on Twitter and called for "justice to honour the memory of this child."

Paris Saint-Germain footballer Kylian Mpabbe tweeted heartbreak emojis and wrote "I'm hurting for my France. An unacceptable situation."

There have been two fatal shootings during traffic stops in France so far in 2023.

In 2022, a record 13 people were killed in such circumstances, compared to three in 2021 and two in 2020, according to a tally from Reuters.

Interior minister Gerald Darmanin told parliament that the two police officers were being questioned and acknowledged that the images posted on social media were “extremely shocking”. He also urged people to “respect the grief of the family and the presumption of innocence of the police”.