France Shooting 2023: A French police officer is currently in custody after being charged with murder Tuesday after killing a teenage boy during a traffic stop near Paris.
France Shooting
A 17-year-old named Naher M. was shot at point-blank range while fleeing in his car and was hit shortly thereafter.
Anger over his assassination sparked violence across the country. Fights broke out at the protest that the boy’s mother had organized on Thursday afternoon.
French authorities said 667 people were arrested on the third night of the riots. In Paris, shops were looted and cars were set on fire overnight, despite a heavily policed presence.
The interior ministry said 40,000 police were deployed across France, of whom 249 were injured in clashes on Wednesday night.
Previously, bus and tram services in Paris and the surrounding area were suspended at 21:00.
Midnight local time (7:00 p.m.)
00 GMT on Thursday). In some suburbs, a curfew has been implemented.
In the city of Nanterre, where a teenage boy died, a huge fire destroyed the first floor of a building housing a bank. Videos and photos on social media also appear to show piles of burning garbage in several places.
Also on Thursday afternoon, a police officer was injured in violence in Nanterre after a mostly peaceful march for justice. Over 6,000 people attended.
Chancellor Elisabeth Born said she understood her feelings after the death of a 17-year-old boy, but she condemned the riots.
“Nothing justifies the violence that happened,” she said. The death of the teenage boy has sparked widespread debate about the relationship between police power and authorities and people in the French suburbs who feel isolated from the country’s wealthy urban centers.
According to Nehel’s attorney Yacine Bouzoulou, “France has legislation and a judiciary that safeguards police officers and fosters a culture of impunity.”
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But Nehel’s mother blamed neither the police in general nor the police for the murder, but only the police officer who fired the fatal shot that killed her son, she said.
A police officer charged with murder was fired because he felt his life was in danger, she said. His lawyer told French radio station RTL that his client fired the gun “in full compliance with the law”. Ansad police union deputy general secretary Thierry Claire told the BBC on Friday morning that the investigation “will determine whether the use of firearms is legal or illegal”.
He said police officers have the legal right to use firearms in certain circumstances.
The notion of proportionality to the severity of the threat is crucial, according to Claire. As an illustration, “In one instance, a vehicle was stopped when its occupants disobeyed a request, endangering others as they fled.”
“And the incidents where guns we’re talking about could fall into that category.”