Businesses multiply and resemble each other. Deaths, lifelong injuries, blinded… During the riots in Marseilles which followed the death of Nahel killed by police shooting in Nanterre, many people were victims of serious abuse, which they or their families attributed to the forces of the army. ‘order. 20 minutes gives a recap of these cases that poison the police force.
Three police officers in custody for the death of Mohamed Bendriss
It is not a policing or intervention police that is targeted by an investigation into the death of 27-year-old Mohamed Bendriss. It’s the Raid. An elite unit of the national police which means “research, assistance, intervention, deterrence”. A unit which, for example, intervened to neutralize Mohammed Merah, who was mobilized to search for the perpetrators of the shooting of Charlie Hebdo or alongside the BRI to free the Bataclan hostages.
Five Raids police officers are thus involved in the investigation into the death, on the night of July 1 to 2, of Mohamed Bendriss, found unconscious in the center of Marseille, near his scooter from which he had fallen. He who worked, among other things, as a home meal delivery man was not working that evening. The autopsy revealed two impacts, at the level of the chest and the thigh, which could correspond to shots from LBD (defense ball launcher). The prosecution considered at the end of July “probable” that his death was caused by a “violent shock to the chest caused by the firing of a projectile of the ‘Flash-Ball type'”.
According to his lawyer Me Arié Alimi, this man of Algerian nationality, married, father of a child and whose widow is expecting a second child, had no intention of taking part in the riots but was returning home and, on the way , had filmed an arrest scene before being hit by an LBD shot. On July 4, a judicial investigation was opened for “fatal blows with a weapon” and entrusted to the judicial police and the IGPN. Three out of five police officers are still in custody on Wednesday at the end of the day. Two were lifted Tuesday evening.
Four indicted in the Hedi case, amputation of the skull
On the night of July 1 to 2 in Marseille, he was hit in the head by an LBD bullet, then beaten, according to witnesses and CCTV footage. Hedi, a catering employee (then 21 years old), had to have part of his brain amputated following this attack, which he accuses four police officers from the anti-crime brigade (Bac) of being behind.
The four agents of the Bac were indicted for aggravated willful violence. One of them, placed in pre-trial detention, finally admitted to justice on August 4 that he had “used LBD”, which he had denied. “I saw that everyone was standing” after this shot, added the 30-year-old, white T-shirt, shaved head, assuring that he would have intervened if he had seen someone on the ground. But his initial “false denial” cast “discredit on all of his remarks”, estimated the president of the investigating chamber of the Aix-en-Provence court of appeal, recalling that he was being prosecuted for the “extremely serious injuries” of the young twenty-something.
Until now, the four police officers implicated in this case were in “an extreme minimization of what happened”, according to the president. The Advocate General listed the “essential elements” delivered by the operation of surveillance cameras, in particular that of a synagogue. They prove that Hedi was indeed beaten up after being shot in the head by LBD.
Abdelkarim, blinded by an LBD
He is the cousin of Mohamed Bendriss. Abdelkarim Y., 22, lost the sight of one eye on the night of June 30 to July 1, hit by an LBD shot from Raid police officers while he was walking alone in Marseille, according to his lawyer, Mr. Arie Alim.
He has “undergone several operations but is currently resting at home”, added his advice. The prosecution has opened a preliminary investigation on the grounds of “intentional violence in a meeting resulting in mutilation or permanent disability by a person holding public authority and with a weapon”.
Artificial coma, blind people… Other cases during the riots
Riots in response to Nahel’s death spread across France. As a result, other cases of violence attributed to the police are emerging. As in Mont-Saint-Martin (Meurthe-et-Moselle), where Aimène Bahouh, a 25-year-old young man received “a” bean bag “on the temple” on the night of June 29 to 30 while he was moving in a car with the window open, explains his family. He has since come out of a coma. According to the first investigations, the driver’s injuries are “compatible with the use of these” bean bags “”, a bag containing tiny lead balls, ammunition used by the Raid.
In Seine-Saint-Denis, Nathaniel, 19, and Mehdi, 21, were both knocked out one night apart at the end of June, in two different cities, Montreuil and Saint-Denis. Their stories, reported by their respective lawyers, are similar: they were in the street accompanied by a friend when they were targeted by an LBD shot causing the permanent loss of the use of their eye. For each case, an investigation for “intentional violence resulting in permanent disability by a person holding public authority and with a weapon” was opened by the Bobigny prosecutor’s office.
Jalil M., 15, explained to street press being hit by an LBD shot, on the sidelines of the riots in Chilly-Mazarin (Essonne), on the night of July 1 to 2. He lost the use of his right eye. A preliminary investigation into willful violence committed by a person in authority was opened on July 4, according to the Evry prosecution.
According to the complaint filed by Virgil M., 24, this former soldier met a group of police officers in Nanterre, the evening after the white march in tribute to Nahel on June 29, and they arrested him before telling him to breaks[r] “. Then, “without any reason” according to his lawyer Arié Alimi, he received a projectile in the left eye, which he lost the use of.