French police, between congratulations and investigation after the riots

Ever since Nahel was killed by a police shot, the absence of the murdered young man’s father was significant, but yesterday Hicham Hammouti He gave interviews to various media in which he announced that he had filed a civil lawsuit. “For justice to be served Nahel and say I’m alive,” he said.

The 42-year-old, born in Colombes, a town near Nanterre, had no relationship with his son. “I made decisions in my life that prevented me from witnessing his birth. I didn’t see his first steps, his first words,” he said and specified that he had a “very difficult life” that led him to prison.

Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin appeared yesterday before the legal committee of the Senate, where he offered a new balance after a week of riots on the streets of many French cities: 3,505 detainees, 23,878 fires on public roads and 2,508 damaged buildingsamong which are 105 town halls, 168 schools and 273 police stations or barracks.

Before appearing before the Senate committee and answering a senator’s question, Darmanin said that “the police must not become a scapegoat” in the drama that happened in Nanterre, and that “of course the work” being done can be improved. by agents, but it cannot be the “only answer to violence” these days. “Let’s not look for excuses in the behavior of the police” for the situation in France, the minister insisted, reminding that firefighters, municipal police officers or mayors have also been violated.

Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne spoke in the same vein, stressing that the “emotions” caused by Nahel’s death “cannot serve as an excuse for theft and robbery.”

For his part, the Minister of Justice, Éric Dupond-Moretti, announced at a session of questioning the Government in the Senate that he had created a brochure for parents to explain in “simple words” their duties to those who “forgot them”, among other things that they must pay the which their minor children steal or destroy.

internal investigations

And while the political class is trying to explain the events that took place these days as a result of Nahel’s death, the General Inspectorate of Police opened “ten investigations” into the actions of agents to stop the riots, according to Darmanin. Three of them are known: one is about the death of a 27-year-old man on the night of Saturday to Sunday in Marseille, where, according to the prosecution, he may have been the victim of a kind of attack. shot. flashsome guns that shoot rubber balls.

The second concerns the serious injuries of a young man in a coma, which occurred in Mont-Saint-Martin on June 30, during the intervention of RAID, an elite police unit. An investigation into the violence at the gathering was also opened in Marseille after a 21-year-old man was hospitalized for injuries sustained in custody, although his life is not in danger.