A French police officer has been charged with homicide and is currently being held in custody for killing a teenager on Tuesday during a traffic stop near Paris.
Nahel M., a 17-year-old, was shot point-blank while driving away and crashed shortly afterwards.
Violence has been started all over the country out of rage over his death. On Thursday afternoon, fights broke out during a march the boy’s mother was leading.
According to French officials, 667 people were detained during a third night of unrest.
Despite a heavy police presence in Paris, stores were looted and cars were set on fire overnight.
According to the interior ministry, 249 police officers were injured during the clashes on Wednesday night, out of the 40,000 police officers deployed throughout France.
Prior to that, Thursday’s bus and tram service in Paris and the surrounding area was stopped at 21:00 local time (19:00 GMT). Some suburbs had curfews at in place at night.
A massive fire completely destroyed the ground floor of a building housing a bank in the town of Nanterre, where the teen was killed.
In Nanterre, violence broke out after a largely peaceful march for justice on Thursday afternoon, injuring officers as well. More than 6,000 people were in attendance.
In response to the death of the 17-year-old, Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne said she recognized the outburst of emotion but decried the riots.
“Nothing justifies the violence that’s occurred,” she said.
The teenager’s death has sparked a wider discussion about the police’s authority and how the government interacts with residents of France’s suburbs, who feel isolated from the country’s prosperous city centres.
“We have a law and judicial system that protects police officers and it creates a culture of impunity in France,” Nahel’s lawyer, Yassine Bouzrou said.
However, Nahel’s mother insisted that she only held the officer responsible for firing the fatal shot that killed her son, not the police force as a whole or the system.
The officer who is accused of killing him claimed that he opened fire because he thought his life was in danger. According to his attorney, his client discharged his gun “in full compliance with the law”.
An investigation would “determine whether this is a case of a legal or illegal use of a weapon”, Unsad-Police deputy secretary general Thierry Clair said in a statement.
According to the law, he said, police officers are permitted to use their weapons under certain conditions.
“The key thing is the principle of proportionality with the nature of the threat,” Mr Clair said.
“For instance, one of the cases refers to stopping a vehicle whose occupants refuse to comply and present a risk for someone else if they attempt to escape.”
“And the incident we’re talking about – in which a weapon was used – might fall into that category.”
Source-BBC
