Three men were sentenced this Friday to 25 years of criminal imprisonment by the Val-d’Oise Assize Court for having lynched and injured two police officers with several bullets in October 2020 in Herblay.
When the decision was announced, the three men, aged 31 to 33, did not say a word while their loved ones cried silently in a courtroom full of police officers, who had come to support their colleagues.
The accused “felt authorized to massacre police officers”
“It was a decision that was expected by my clients and by all the police,” reacted Me Pierre Salem-Cormier, lawyer for one of the victims.
The sentences are slightly lower than the requisitions of the attorney general who had requested 30 years of criminal imprisonment with two-thirds security against the accused who “felt authorized to massacre police officers”.
Ten bullets fired
On the evening of October 7, 2020, two officers from the Cergy judicial police went to an industrial zone in Herblay where the warehouse of a manager was located, attacked the same morning by heavily armed men.
The police officers go there in civilian clothes, in an unmarked car, which leads the three men to doubt their identity, saying they take them for members of the Traveler community posing as police officers despite the evidence presented by the officials ( professional card, weapon).
The tone rises, a violent fight breaks out. The attackers seize a weapon from a police officer. Ten bullets are fired, two into the legs of a police officer, four into the body of his colleague. The facts caused great excitement among the police.
Strong testimonies
The testimonies of the police officers, who came to the bar to recount their serious physical and psychological after-effects and the end of their career in the field, were a highlight of the trial.
The only one of the two police officers to have memories of the scene, the major reported the words of Lyess Souid saying “take their weapons and kill these dirty cops”, a sentence that the person concerned always denied having uttered.
One of the attackers will appeal
Prosecuted for complicity in murder, the latter was therefore sentenced to the same sentence as his co-defendants: throughout the investigation and the two weeks of trial, no one wanted to say who was the perpetrator of the shooting.
Saïd Harir, Lyess Souid’s lawyer, indicated that he would appeal this decision. “The entire investigation showed that he had not participated in the violence and the shooting,” he reported, recalling that his client had surrendered two days after the events, unlike the two others who spent five less on the run.