A trial is opening in a French counterterrorism court over the killing of two police officers in their home in 2016, in front of their three-year-old son.
A political row has broken out after the head of France's national police service, Frédéric Veaux, said that police officers should not be detained in custody even if they face serious accusations in the line of duty. His criticism of the legal system came after one of four police officers in Marseille facing an investigation for allegedly beating up a young man during the recent unrest was remanded in custody. Veaux's comments, which were supported by Paris police chief Laurent Nuñez, have attracted criticism from opposition politicians, though the government and its supporters have so far declined to condemn them. Mediapart's Fabien Escalona spoke to Sebastien Roché, director of research at the CNRS public research institute and a noted expert on police and security issues. He says that the unprecedented comments by France's two most senior cops highlight the political fragility of President Emmanuel Macron's government.
While calls for an overhaul of the French police go back decades, violent episodes of police enforcement continue and so do violent outpourings on the street.
There were up to 150 arrests as interior minister Gérald Darmanin attacked what he called a "night of intolerable violence against symbols of the republic, with town halls, schools and police stations set on fire or attacked". It follows the shooting by police of 17-year-old Nahel at Nanterre in the western suburbs of Paris.
The French government has become embroiled in a dispute with the independent public body responsible for overseeing the rights of people held in custody or prison. That body, the Contrôleur Général des Lieux de Privation de Liberté, inspected custody conditions in nine Paris police stations during the height of the anti-pension reforms demonstration in March. In a subsequent report it has criticised what it calls “serious infringements” of the rights of those being held and the “repressive use” of custody by the police. The interior minister Gérald Darmanin has hit back, claiming the controller general has “exceeded her jurisdiction”, while the Paris police chief said he felt “insulted”. Mediapart's Célia Mebroukine spoke to the controller general, Dominique Simonnot, about the controversy.
A 30-year-old man is in hospital in a critical condition after he was wounded to the head by a grenade fired by police during a demonstration by environmental activists against the building of a giant water reservoir for cereal farmers, when the very violent clashes left dozens of others injured among both police and demonstrators.
Reports about the Pont Neuf shooting in Mediapart and Libération question the officer’s claim he was acting to save lives of colleagues because car was driving at them.
A Paris police patrol, who last weekend opened fire on the occupants of car whose driver had refused the officers' oders to pull over, and who fatally wounded a woman passenger, 'could have acted differently' according a friend of the victim who was also present in the vehicle.
Transport police shot dead a man who reportedly threatened them with a knife during the early rush hour on Monday inside the Paris Gare du Nord station, the busiest in Europe, which officials later said is not believed to be a terrorist-related incident.
Six French police officers from Roubaix in northern France are under investigation after their five-seat car crashed into a parked vehicle when a woman officer fired a Taser at the driver, apparently as a joke, after which, according to a local prosecutor, they fled the scene.
Constitutional Council said that MPs who passed the controversial legislation had not set out clearly enough what would constitute a breach of the law in such situations.
On April 18th 2021 five youths were found guilty on appeal of an attack in 2016 in which two police officers were set ablaze when their patrol car was pelted with petrol bombs in a Paris suburb. The five were given jail terms of between six and 18 years. Eight other youths were acquitted. The appeal verdicts, which were more lenient than the original trial in 2019, caused outrage among some politicians and led to a protest march by angry police officers. But Mediapart can reveal that the real scandal was the way in which police detectives ran the initial investigation into the brutal attack in Viry-Châtillon. Officers truncated or cut out entire sections of what suspects said in custody. They also put pressure on them to implicate other youths from the area. Lawyers for some of those involved have described it as a “legal scandal” and formal complaints have now been made to prosecutors about the conduct of the detectives. Pascale Pascariello reports.
