When five youths were convicted and jailed and eight others acquitted last week over a petrol bomb attack in which two police officers were badly burned, there was outrage among some politicians and organisations representing the police. After the verdicts were announced on April 18th, police officers held a protest march to vent their anger at the outcome of the appeal hearing into the grim events that took place at Viry-Châtillon in the southern suburbs of Paris in 2016.
Politicians, too, voiced their dismay over the acquittals and the sentences for those found guilty, which ranged from six to 18 years imprisonment. Jean-Pierre Grand, a senator for the right-wing Les Républicains, said: “This is an awful message to send to young delinquents and criminals: they have a great chance of being found not guilty!” And his right-wing colleague in the Senate Marc-Philippe Daubresse declared: “The accused get the benefit of the doubt. And the sentences are weak in relation to the facts.”
But as Mediapart can reveal, the real scandal is not in the acquittals or the sentences of those found guilty but in the original investigation into the events of October 8th 2016. Mediapart has had access to the video recordings of the questioning of two suspects, 'Foued', 22, and 'Dylan', 25 - at their request their real names have been withheld. These recordings prove that the police investigators hid elements that cleared them of involvement in the attack. Yet Foued was later convicted at the original trial in the case and spent four years in detention.
After he was finally acquitted last week, and having discovered these police evidential breaches, Foued wanted to send the details of his case to Mediapart, which forms part of a long line of other cases in which the police have potentially falsified evidence. Having spent four years and three months in prison, the 22-year-old has reflected for the first time about what he called this “nightmare”. He told Mediapart in relation to the police investigators: “They weren't looking for the culprits, just any culprits.”
Tensions and emotions have run high in this case from the very start. On October 8th 2016 two police vehicles carrying out a patrol in the La Grande-Borner area of Viry-Châtillon, south of Paris, were targeted by a group of around 20 hooded youths.
Hit by a petrol bomb, two of the police officers were badly burned. Unlike the investigation methods used to find those responsible for the attack, the seriousness of the events have never been a matter of debate.
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The questionable nature of the investigation was revealed in the video recordings made of the suspects' questioning. French law allows for such recordings for criminal cases and in some cases where the suspects are minors. Watching these interviews in full revealed that in their final statements - which were used as evidence in court proceedings - the detectives had truncated what the suspects had said during questioning.
The evidence not included in the final statements produced by the detectives included the suspects' constant and numerous protestations of their innocence, explanations proving their whereabouts at the time of the attack, details of some telephone conversations they had at the time, and the fact that other suspects had categorically ruled them out of any involvement.
Contrary to Article 429 of France's criminal procedure code there is no trace in the final transcripts, either, of some of the detectives' questions nor their line of questioning; in particular there is no mention of the pressure that was put on the accused or of the insults and comments of a racist nature that were made.
The recordings show how the investigations had reached a dead end and highlight the determination of detectives to find guilty parties, despite the absence of any proof in some cases.
At the initial trial in 2019 Foued was convicted and given an 18-year jail term for the attempted murder of a person in a position of public authority. According to the 15-page statement written up by detectives after his questioning it seemed that he “no longer remembered” having taken part in events on that night in October 2016.
At that first trial in 2019 the court justified the conviction by stating that Foued had “implicitly admitted in a very ambiguous way that he could have taken part in the events without remembering precisely in his final questioning in custody at which time he had a lawyer present”.
Yet a look at the ten hours of recordings of the questioning and their full transcript, which runs to more than 200 pages – and which was introduced at the appeal hearing – shows that Foued protested his innocence more than 100 times. He consistantly denied things that the detectives were pushing him to admit.
Under questioning another suspect had also completely cleared Foued of any involvement. But this information, too, disappeared from the final statement drawn up by the detectives.
It was in the light of this more complete information that the criminal appeal court in Paris acquitted Foued on April 18th. In its judgement the court said that the “evidence gathered against him seems insufficient” and that, unlike the statement that had been drawn up by the detectives, watching the recordings of the questioning showed that his “ambiguous declarations cannot be considered as acknowledgement of the facts”.
The lawyers representing Foued and Dylan, Yaël Scemama, Michel and Élias Stansal and Sarah Mauger-Poliak, are appalled. “Quite simply, these statements were truncated,” said Yaël Scemama. “All that's been retained are a few responses which, without any further explanation, could be interpreted as incriminating. Even though Foued repeated more than a hundred times that he didn't take part in the violence, that he didn't know who carried it out, it appears from his written statement that he can't remember having taken part!” said the lawyer.
At the time at which the police officers were attacked on October 8th 2016 Foued was at home with his family; he then went close to where events took place before going off to collect his ten-year-old nephew. He recalls the accident that he and his nephew had on his quad bike which led to them being taken to accident and emergency by fire and rescue service officers. Foued's elbow was put in plaster as a result of the accident. During questioning Foued got confused over the timing of events and initially thought he had been hurt early in the day. “I made a mistake, I'm sorry,” he told detectives.
But they did not take it that way. From that point on the detectives bombarded the young man with questions and the process went on for ten hours. “You're an idiot,” one detective told him. “You're not even man enough to admit it.”
Foued then questioned the detective and reminded him that he had slapped him. “And even if I did slap you, what does that matter, I'm not talking about that,” replied the police officer. This exchange did not feature in the final statement.
During the ten hours of questioning the police officers wore Foued down, urging him to give names and accusing him of having taken part in the violence. The young man regularly broke down in tears and continued to insist he was innocent. On his third day in police custody, January 19th 2017, Foued finally cracked.
'You won't go to jail if you answer my questions correctly'
It should be pointed out that the detectives were helped by the duty lawyer appointed to represent Foued. The lawyer tried to persuade the young man that he “was there”. Foued said: “I wasn't there.” And the exhausted young man repeatedly said: “I'm sure in my mind that I wasn't part of the attack.”
The lawyer then explained to Foued that he had perhaps suffered a “blackout”. When subsequently questioned about this it was clear the young man had not grasped what his lawyer meant. So the lawyer then gave him the example of one of his clients “who had stabbed someone. He stabbed them and couldn't explain it. Only that he couldn't remember anything.”
A shocked Foued then held his head in his hands for around ten seconds. “My god … how does this phenomenon happen?” he said. A few minutes later, when asked “Did you take part in this attack, that you no longer remember”, Foued replied: “I don't remember for a second if I did it or not.”
These doubts expressed by Foued were retained in the formal statement which, however, made no mention either of the examples given by his lawyer to convince Foued, nor the young man's own declarations afterwards. The tapes show that he said: “I don't remember it. I'm going to go mad. There's still an anxiety in me. I don't know what it is. In my head I didn't do it. If I say that I did it, if I say that to you, the anxiety will remain because in my mind I didn't do it.”
During questioning Foued explained that the three days in custody had made him 95% doubtful of himself. At this point his lawyer turned towards the detectives and said to them: “It's up to you to scratch away the 5% that remains.”
The lawyer whom Foued hired later, Yaël Scemama, said that it was a case in which “the highest levels of state intervened at the time of the events, to demand the exemplary punishment of those guilty. After four and a half years of proceedings, an innocent person was almost convicted for good. Need one be reminded that the presumption of innocence is the cornerstone of our system and applies to everyone?” she asked.
The lawyer said she regretted the “political and trade union reactions, almost misrepresentations, [after] the acquittals pronounced in a case where all the underlying facts have been ignored. An innocent person is an innocent person, whatever the objective seriousness of the facts, the person or the nature of the victim.”
Dylan's lawyer, Sarah Mauger-Poliak, expressed a similar view. She did not have automatic access to the video recordings of her client's questioning because “they can only be consulted in an investigation where [the accused's] statements are disputed”. She said: “When I was able to see the recordings of Dylan' questioning I was horrified. Many of Dylan's explanations about SMS conversations, about his whereabouts and his protestations of innocence had disappeared from the statements, which were cut short.”
On the day of the events in question, October 8th 2016, 21-year-old Dylan had gone out in his neighbourhood to place a bet on a sporting event. At around 2.55pm, the time that the police officers were attacked, he was not far from the vicinity. Dylan also knew the youths suspected of the attack. They are reportedly members of a gang nicknamed 'S' after the name of the street in which they often gathered, Rue de la Serpente.
On several occasions the detective investigating Dylan pursued a curious line of questioning. At one point he offered to “do a deal” with the young man. He said: “You won't go to prison if you reply to my questions correctly.” Dylan replied: “Correctly?” The detective explained: “We demonstrate something and afterwards it's down to you to show your good faith by saying 'yes, in fact, there was so-and-so, so-and-so.'” Once again, there is no trace of this talk about a “deal” in the final statement.
Exhausted and often in tears, Dylan constantly insisted that he was “not involved” in this attack, that he knew nothing about what was being planned against the police officers, and that he did not know the culprits.
During a break in the questioning, one of the detectives, wrongly thinking that the cameras had been switched off, admitted: “I'm still convinced that he didn't take part in it.” His colleague shared his view but suggested that this should not be taken into account: “We should link him to the thing [editor's note, the proceedings].” Dylan then spent 18 months on remand in prison awaiting trial before being acquitted at the first trial in 2019, and then being acquitted for a second time at the appeal case.
Another detail that the detectives did not put in their final statement was Dylan's relief when they told him that his mobile phone signal at the time of the attack had been detected. “You'll have seen that I wasn't there … If it's more exact you're going to see that I wasn't inside there,” he repeated to the detectives. Yet the triangulation of the phone signal simply indicated a zone and not a precise point. “The [phone signal] detection is not exact. So there, that's a point that plays against you,” he was told.
The detective concluded, with a touch of irony: “Sometimes it's just bad luck. You're at the wrong place at the wrong time, it can happen to anyone.” This conversation, too, did not make its way into the final statement. In the end Dylan was depicted as a member of the 'S' gang who may have taken part in events, and who at the very least was informed of the plans of the attack on the police.
Dylan's lawyer, Sarah Mauger-Poliak, ponders what it was that could have “led to a legal scandal: putting away youths, most of them with no criminal record, for years, even though there was nothing against them. The falsifying of public documents is the first stage in understanding [what happened], and by no means the least important. To falsify evidence is to disguise the truth and to deceive the person who is assessing it.”
The lawyer now wants fresh investigations carried out to “understand the size of the legal scandal: did the police officers knowingly take the risk of leaving some guilty people at liberty and of putting in detention some people they knew were innocent?”
As Le Parisien newspaper has revealed, during the second week of the appeal trial the lawyer of one of the defendants, Frédérick Petipermon, filed two formal complaints against the detectives with prosecutors at Évry-Courcouronnes, south of Paris, for forgery and use of false instruments.
For him, too, the trigger for his actions was watching the videos of the questioning of one of the central witnesses in the case. Those videos gave rise to an official statement that was 30 pages long, yet a court transcript of the whole recordings ran to more than 150 pages. The official police statement of evidence states that the young witness who was questioned provided a list of 21 suspects. There is no trace of this list in the recordings.
The complaints lodged by Frédérick Petipermon, which Mediapart has seen, also note that the police statements make no mention of the “pressure and blackmail put on this witness for him to inform on the authors of the events of October 8th 2016, of the blandishments to encourage him to make some revelations. That all takes away any spontaneity from the witness statement, which has a negative impact on the probative value of his evidence,” said the lawyer.
During the appeal hearing this witness explained that he had been under pressure from the police, who went as far as to organise meetings with his family in a Paris hotel to guarantee them police protection in exchange for his statements.
Even one of the lawyers representing the police victims in the case, Laurent-Franck Lienard, told Mediapart of his concerns about the “quality of the investigation”, which was carried out by local detectives. He regretted the fact that the investigation had not been handed to detectives from outside the area or to a more “expert” unit.
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- The original French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter