Other police “are also summoned today to be heard as witnesses,” said the Marseille prosecutor’s office on Tuesday in a statement.
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Five Raid police officers were taken into custody on the morning of Tuesday August 8, the Marseille prosecutor’s office announced in a press release. They were summoned, along with around twenty of their colleagues, before the investigators of the IGPN (the “police of the police”) responsible for the investigation into the death of a 27-year-old man, on the sidelines of the riots in Marseilles , on the night of July 1 to 2.
Mohamed Bendriss was found unresponsive outside his mother’s home after feeling unwell on the handlebars of his scooter. His death was declared at the hospital where a doctor observed an impact on the chest. This impact, at the origin of the death of the young man, could be the consequence of a shot from a defense ball launcher (LBD).
Mohamed Bendriss had collapsed a few hundred meters further, two minutes later. No other police intervention had been detected in the interval between the shooting and his discomfort.
Three sources studied
The investigators of the judicial police and the IGPN therefore tried to reconstruct the scenario of the drama, in particular from the videos shot that night. They rely for this on three distinct sources: an amateur video shot by a resident from an apartment, surveillance images of a store and finally the video of a police vehicle.
The Raid police officers will now deliver their version of the night of the drama as part of an investigation opened on July 4 for “fatal blows with the use or threat of a weapon”. The investigations will have to determine if LBD’s fatal shooting was legal or not.