2023-07-01 04:28:00
New scenes of looting and sporadic violence shook several cities in France on Friday, but the night was marked by violence of a “much less intensity” than the previous ones according to the authorities, four days after the death of Nahel, killed by a police fire during a road check in Nanterre.
Seized by an amateur video that contradicted the initial story given by the police, the point-blank shooting of a police motorcyclist and the death of the 17-year-old teenager continues to set fire to many working-class neighborhoods in the country.
Traveling to Mantes-la-Jolie (Yvelines), the Minister of the Interior announced around 2:30 a.m. violence of a “less intensity” with 471 arrests at the national level, and pockets of tension in particular in Marseille and Lyon.
In an attempt to stem the spiral of riots, Gérald Darmanin announced in the afternoon, following a second interministerial crisis committee in two days, the “exceptional” mobilization of 45,000 police and gendarmes and units elite like the GIGN to avoid a fourth consecutive night of riots and this a few hours before the burial of Nahel on Saturday in the capital of Hauts-de-Seine. Dozens of police vans were thus positioned not far from the entrance to the Vieux Pont district in Nanterre, the epicenter of urban violence and punctuated on Friday again by firework mortar fire.
For their part, the players of the French football team sent a “call for appeasement, awareness and responsibility” in the evening. “The time of violence must end to give way to that of mourning, dialogue and reconstruction,” urged the Blues. In the evening, Marseille was once again the scene of clashes and scenes of looting, from the city center then further north in these working-class neighborhoods long neglected that President Emmanuel Macron visited at the start of the week.
Around 2 a.m., the police announced 88 arrests since the start of the evening, groups of young people, often masked and “very mobile” looting or trying to do so several signs. A major fire, “linked to the riots”, according to a police source, broke out in a supermarket.
Scenes of looting of shops and clashes between hooded demonstrators and the police also made the evening feverish in certain corners of Grenoble, Saint-Etienne and Lyon, while in the western region, points of tension such as in Angers or Tours and its region there remained in the middle of the night only a few very mobile groups facing the police.
In Nanterre, nine people were arrested, carrying jerrycans and Molotov cocktails.
In Saint-Denis, an administrative center was affected by a fire, and in Val-d’Oise, the town hall of Persan-Beaumont and the municipal police station caught fire and were partly destroyed.
To avoid overflows, Gérald Darmanin had asked the prefects to stop buses and trams throughout France after 9 p.m.
The government has also decided to cancel “large-scale” events, in particular the concerts of Mylène Farmer at the Stade de France on Friday and Saturday.
The Keeper of the Seals, Eric Dupond-Moretti, called for a “rapid, firm and systematic” criminal response against the perpetrators of urban violence but also their parents.
Pointing to the youth of many rioters, Emmanuel Macron called “all parents to responsibility”, criticizing the “instrumentalization” of Nahel’s death and asking social networks to “remove” content and identify their users.
The question of the state of emergency is raised and scrutinized abroad, especially since France is hosting the Rugby World Cup in the fall, then the Olympic Games in Paris in the summer of 2024. Britain and other European countries have warned their nationals, urging them to avoid riot zones.
Since the death on Tuesday of Nahel, a school drop-out teenager who became a delivery man, schools and public buildings have been the target of the anger of young residents of working-class neighborhoods and set on fire in multiple cities in France, recalling the riots which shook France in 2005 after the death of two teenagers pursued by the police.
The spark this time was the tragedy that occurred on Tuesday near the Nanterre-Préfecture RER station, not far from the business center of La Défense, during a police check on the car driven by Nahel, a minor known for refusals to comply.
The 38-year-old policeman, author of the shot, was indicted for intentional homicide and remanded in custody on Thursday afternoon.
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