Hundreds gather to mourn Nahel M., a teenager whose death sparked protests in France

Day of “rare violence”: A police investigation of rioting in France after the EU summit and a warning from Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin

There were disagreements across France throughout the day. There was a Molotov cocktail thrown at a police office in the town of Pau, in southwestern France. Vehicles were set on fire in Toulouse and a tramway train was torched in Lyon, police said.

In order to return to Paris after the EU summit, the President had planned to hold an emergency security meeting with other heads of state.

Around 200 police officers were injured, according to a national police spokesperson. No information was available about injuries among the rest of the population.

Schools, town halls and police stations were attacked with fires and police used water cannons, tear gas and dispersion grenades to quell rioters.

Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin on Friday denounced what he called a night of “rare violence.” The office characterized the arrests as a sharp increase on previous operations, and part of an overall government effort to be really firm with rioters.

When a police officer fired at a young man in Marseille, killing two boys in the attack on a French teen demonstrating solidarity with anti-racism

The government has stopped short of declaring a state of emergency — a measure taken to quell weeks of rioting around France that followed the accidental death of two boys fleeing police in 2005.

A police officer was taken into custody after the shooting — and on Thursday, prosecutor Pascal Prache announced a preliminary charge of voluntary homicide against the officer, saying that a review found the legal standard for the officer to use his gun had not been met when he fired at Nahel from close range.

The detained police officer’s lawyer, speaking on French TV channel BFMTV, said the officer was sorry and “devastated.” The officer did what he thought was needed in the moment, according to the attorney.

The police officer who is accused of murdering people didn’t show up in the morning to do it. He did not want to kill.

The shooting captured on video shocked France and stirred up long-simmering tensions between police and young people in housing projects and other disadvantaged neighborhoods.

“We have to go beyond saying that things need to calm down,” said Dominique Sopo, head of the campaign group SOS Racisme. “The issue here is how do we make it so that we have a police force that when they see Blacks and Arabs, don’t tend to shout at them, use racist terms against them and in some cases, shoot them in the head.”

The peaceful march in honor of Nahel Thursday afternoon was followed by confrontations that led to cars and garbage bins being set on fire.

Bursts of riots in the suburbs of Clichy-sous-Bonna and Neuilly-sur-Marne

In order to avoid public unrest, the town of Clamart put in an overnight curfew through Monday. A similar curfew was announced in the town of Neuilly-sur-Marne in the eastern suburbs.

Prache, the Nanterre prosecutor, said officers tried to stop Nahel because he looked so young and was driving a Mercedes with Polish license plates in a bus lane. He allegedly ran a red light to avoid being stopped then got stuck in traffic.

The footage from several vantage points shows that the police officers were standing next to the car, with one pointing a gun inside, as the car moved past them.

The scenes in France’s suburbs echoed 2005, when the deaths of 15-year-old Bouna Traoré and 17-year-old Zyed Benna led to three weeks of riots, exposing anger and resentment in neglected housing projects. The boys were electrocuted after hiding from police in a power substation in Clichy-sous-Bois.

Deadly use of firearms is less common in France than in the United States, though several people have died or been wounded by French police in recent years, prompting demands for more accountability. France also saw protests against racial injustice after George Floyd’s killing by police in Minnesota.

A police spokesperson said 13 people who didn’t comply with traffic stops were fatally shot by police last year. This year, three people, including Nahel, have died in similar circumstances.

The killing of a teenage police officer killed at a bus stop: France’s youth police shooting protests are becoming like America’s

Fleming commented, “So it really matters that this boy who was killed was French, because France’s history of racist behavior towards Black people and Arabs is pretty much what it is today.”

Unrest over the killing of Nahel, whose family has Algerian roots, is “about something much bigger,” she said, adding, “In any society, the policing that we see, and discrimination that takes place, reflects the biases of that society and that society’s history.”

The reality is that it is not inexplicable. It’s not rocket science, it’s racism,” said Fleming, the author of Resurrecting Slavery: Racial Legacies and White Supremacy in France.

Critics say that Macron and other leaders are showing sympathy — but not an intent to examine whether the problems that led to Nahel’s death run deeper than a single officer’s actions.

George Floyd’s murder by a police officer in Minneapolis in 2020 led to widespread unrest, and the killing of Nahel is now a rallying call.

“You are going to get a bullet in the head,” a voice is heard saying, according to the France24 news outlet. A single shot is heard as the car moves forward. Nahel died at the scene; his car rolled forward, coming to a stop after hitting a utility pole.

Two other people were in the car with Nahel — one has spoken to police, but the other fled the scene and was being sought by law enforcement, Jarry said.

The two officers were riding their motorcycles when they attempted to stop the car, which was speeding through the bus lanes according to a timetable issued by the prosecutor’s office. The prosecutor stated that the driver did not stop until he was cut off by a traffic jam.

Marine Tondelier, leader of the Green party, said, “You get the feeling that our police are becoming like America’s,” after hearing conflicting versions of events about deadly violence.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/06/30/1185394143/france-teen-police-shooting-protests-nahel

The killing of a 17-year-old teenager by a police officer is not a secondary news item: the case of Nahel’s family

The chant heard repeatedly is, “Justice pour Nahel,” but while the protest center around the teenager’s tragic death, demonstrators’ demands go further.

From the mayor to the president, authorities expressed their condolences and support for Nahel’s family this week, along with a pledge to hold police accountable. But as protests intensified, leaders have increasingly focused on trying to control the crowds and prevent damage, deploying tens of thousands of police.

Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin wrote a letter thanking the police and other emergency personnel for their restraint.

Jarry and others asked protesters to not damage buildings used for critical services. Two schools have been targeted, he said, and a leisure center and cultural center have been badly damaged or destroyed.

Djigui, one of the thousands of protesters who took to the streets in Paris on Thursday, told me that his mother still seems nervous whenever he leaves the house. “I can hear the crack in her voice when she checks to make sure I have my ID card or just says, ‘Watch out.’”

Still, the killing of Nahel M. might have ended up as little more than a secondary news item. The police officers shot a fleeing driver in self-defense, according to early press accounts. This version of events would have placed the officers under the protection of a 2017 law, passed by Mr. Macron’s predecessor, François Hollande, that loosened police restrictions on the use of firearms in cases where a driver refuses to stop at an officer’s order. The number of fatal police shootings has increased in recent years and has reached a peak of 52 deaths in 2021, with this law cited as one cause.

Hundreds gathered in the western suburb of Nanterre on Saturday to pay their final respects to Nahel M., a 17-year-old teenager who was fatally shot by a police officer after being stopped for a traffic violation.

A lot of people were hired to keep order and prevent anyone from filming or taking photos. The mosque became so filled that at one point some 300 mourners spilled out into the street where they participated in a public prayer of mourning.

The violence of Nahel in Nanterre, France, and the advice of the Interior Minister for children under 13 pleaded with Darmanin

“Do something to help this boy’s mother, because I am worried about her safety” pleaded Catherine, a nanny who didn’t want to give her last name out of fear for her safety. I can’t even picture it. He could have been our children.

Some said they were disappointed by several politicians on the right and far-right, who they felt had seized on the moment to try to tarnish the boy’s image.

“It’s like Nahel was killed twice,” said Nordine Iznasni, a community activist who has been a staple of Nanterre for decades. “First, with a bullet, then a second time with a smear to his reputation.”

The displays of the destruction were still on display despite a morning clean up. Multiple shops and cafés showed missing or shattered windows, layers of melted plastic (what were once garbage cans) caked the streets, and then there were the remnants of multiple cars that had been burnt to a crisp.

The French government has deployed tens of thousands of police across the country as they brace for more unrest, and French PresidentEmmanuelMacron has called off a state visit to Germany.

The government made an order asking young people to stay at home. Gérald Darmanin, France’s interior minister, said the average age of those arrested on Thursday was 17 — some were as young as 13.