New scenes of looting and sporadic violence shook several cities in France on Friday, but the night was marked by violence of a “much less intensity” than the previous ones according to the authorities, four days after the death of Nahel, killed by a police shooting during a road check in Nanterre, and whose funeral must take place this Saturday.
Traveling to Mantes-la-Jolie (Yvelines), the Minister of the Interior announced around 2:30 a.m. violence of a “less intensity” with 471 arrests at the national level, and pockets of tension in particular in Marseille and Lyon.
In an attempt to stem the spiral of riots, Gérald Darmanin announced in the afternoon, following a second interministerial crisis committee in two days, the “exceptional” mobilization of 45,000 police and gendarmes and units elite like the GIGN to avoid a fourth consecutive night of riots and this a few hours before the burial of Nahel on Saturday in the capital of Hauts-de-Seine.
Supermarket burnt down in Marseille
Dozens of police vans were thus positioned not far from the entrance to the Vieux Pont district in Nanterre, the epicenter of urban violence and punctuated on Friday again by firework mortar fire.
For their part, the players of the French football team sent a “call for appeasement, awareness and responsibility” in the evening. “The time of violence must end to give way to that of mourning, dialogue and reconstruction,” urged the Blues.
In the evening, Marseille was once again the scene of clashes and scenes of looting, from the city center then further north in these working-class neighborhoods long neglected that President Emmanuel Macron visited at the start of the week.
Around 2 a.m., the police announced 88 arrests since the start of the evening, groups of young people, often masked and “very mobile” looting or trying to do so several signs. A major fire, “linked to the riots”, according to a police source, broke out in a supermarket.
Tensions in Lyon, Saint-Etienne and Grenoble
Scenes of looting of shops and clashes between hooded demonstrators and police also feverish the evening in certain corners of Grenoble, Saint-Etienne and Lyon, where light armored vehicles and Raid police were deployed. In the western region, points of tension such as Angers or Tours and its region, there remained in the middle of the night only a few very mobile groups facing the police.
The Paris region was not spared by the flames, in particular Colombes (Hauts-de-Seine) enveloped in a strong smell of burning and where firefighters extinguished a burning car, noted an AFP journalist on the spot. In Nanterre, 9 people were arrested, carrying jerry cans and Molotov cocktails.
In Saint-Denis, an administrative center was affected by a fire, and in Val-d’Oise, the town hall of Persan-Beaumont and the municipal police station caught fire and were partly destroyed.
Curfew and transport stop
To avoid overflows, Gérald Darmanin had asked the prefects to stop buses and trams throughout France after 9 p.m. The administrative court for its part validated on Friday the curfew put in place in Clamart (Hauts-de-Seine), and in fact those also established in other municipalities.
Demonstrations “against racism, crime and police violence” were also banned Friday evening in Paris, in the center of Marseille, Lyon, Bordeaux, or Toulouse. But several hundred people marched despite everything, notably in Montpellier with signs “Let’s dissolve the police, how many Nahels have not been filmed? “, noted two AFP journalists.
The government has also decided to cancel “large-scale” events, in particular the concerts of Mylène Farmer at the Stade de France on Friday and Saturday. The Keeper of the Seals, Eric Dupond-Moretti, called for a “rapid, firm and systematic” criminal response against the perpetrators of urban violence but also their parents.
Pointing the finger at the youth of many rioters, Emmanuel Macron called “all parents to responsibility”, criticizing the “instrumentalization” of Nahel’s death and asking social networks to “remove” content and identify their users.
Emergency state
The question of the state of emergency is raised and scrutinized abroad, especially since France is hosting the Rugby World Cup in the fall, then the Olympic Games in Paris in the summer of 2024. Britain and other European countries have warned their nationals, urging them to avoid riot zones.
Since the death on Tuesday of Nahel, a school drop-out teenager who became a delivery man, schools and public buildings have been the target of the anger of young residents of working-class neighborhoods and set on fire in multiple cities in France, recalling the riots which shook France in 2005 after the death of two teenagers pursued by the police.
The spark this time was the tragedy that occurred on Tuesday near the Nanterre-Préfecture RER station, not far from the business center of La Défense, during a police check on the car driven by Nahel, a minor known for refusals to comply. The 38-year-old policeman, author of the shot, was indicted for intentional homicide and remanded in custody on Thursday afternoon.