A police car burnt down on October 8, 2016 in Viry-Châtillon. – AFP
It was in a particularly electric atmosphere that the verdict was rendered in the attack on police officers burned with Molotov cocktails at Viry-Châtillon in Essonne in 2016. The Paris court of assizes sentenced minors overnight from Saturday to Sunday appealed five young people to sentences ranging from 6 to 18 years of criminal imprisonment and pronounced 8 acquittals.
At first instance, eight of the defendants were found guilty of attempted murder of persons holding public authority and sentenced to terms ranging from 10 to 20 years in prison. Five others had been acquitted.
Intervention of the police
Tried behind closed doors since March 2, the 5 convicts were found guilty of attempted murder on persons holding public authority. The president could not finish reading the verdict, delivered after 14 hours of deliberation, but had time to state the totality of the penalties. A fight indeed broke out in the box of the accused then in the courtroom, forcing the police to intervene in numbers. Calm returned after about ten minutes.
On October 8, 2016, in broad daylight in Viry-Châtillon, around twenty young people stormed two police cars parked near the Grande Borne district, a vast social housing complex, considered one of the most sensitive people from Île-de-France. Two policemen were injured, one seriously.