He will be judged for “complicity by order of violence by a person holding public authority” having “resulted in an ITT of more than 8 days”. Superintendent Rabah Souchi, who had ordered the police charge during which a septuagenarian, Geneviève Legay, had been seriously injured in March 2019 in Nice, was returned to the Lyon criminal court, we learned this Friday from the city prosecutor’s office.
On March 23, 2019, the Attac activist suffered several broken ribs and skull fractures when being thrown to the ground during a police charge ordered to disperse a banned demonstration of “yellow vests”. Superintendent Rabah Souchi was in charge of law enforcement operations that day.
“Compliant with the requisitions of the prosecution”
“An order for referral to the Lyon Criminal Court was issued by the investigating magistrate in charge of this case on June 20. The referral order complies with the requisitions of the prosecution, ”he said, without giving a date for this trial.
The prosecution’s requisitions, dated January 5, demanded the dismissal of Commissioner Souchi on the grounds of “complicity by order of violence by a person holding public authority” having “resulted in an ITT of more than 8 days”.
For the Lyon public prosecutor’s office, the constituent elements of the offense noted are “perfectly characterized” with “a charge ordered by Commissioner Souchi” which “was neither proportionate nor necessary for the situation in question”.
“Inappropriate” orders
In October 2021, previous requisitions for dismissal from the same prosecutor’s office had been announced by the lawyer for the divisional police commissioner, Me Laurent-Franck Liénard, on the count of “complicity in intentional violence”. The investigating chamber of the Lyon Court of Appeal subsequently requested new hearings and the use of a video taken by a gendarmerie officer showing the commissioner conversing on “the use of force”, after rejecting some of the civil party’s requests for action.
This was followed by new partial investigations and then a new notice of end of information in August 2022. In its investigation report, the General Inspectorate of the National Police (IGPN) had judged the police charge disproportionate due to “unsuitable” orders. Commissioner Souchi was indicted in November 2020 as part of a disoriented investigation in Lyon, after a lively controversy around the case fueled by the contradictory points of view of the authorities.
The public prosecutor of Nice at the material time initially denied any physical contact between the victim and the police, comments echoed by President Emmanuel Macron. After the exploitation of CCTV images, the magistrate had recognized that Geneviève Legay had been pushed by a police officer.