Faced with the “fracture” which was created between police and magistrates over police violence after the summer riots, the new Marseille prosecutor wanted to remind Marseille on Monday of “some fundamentals”, in the presence of the Minister of Defense. Justice Eric Dupond-Moretti. It is “essential that I speak to you” about the “problem of police violence after the events and riots of early July which led to a divide between the police and the judiciary”, declared Nicolas Bessone during his solemn presentation hearing at the judicial court of Marseilles.
Reminder of the fundamentals
In total, the Marseille prosecutor’s office has decided to prosecute around ten police officers in connection with four cases of alleged police violence during the riots in Marseille at the end of June-beginning of July, after the death of young Nahel, killed a few days earlier by the shooting of a police officer during a road check in Nanterre, a Paris suburb. The decision to place in pre-trial detention a police officer accused of being the author of the LBD shooting which is said to have seriously injured a 22-year-old young man in Marseille, Hedi, part of whose skull had to be amputated, had provoked a vast movement police revolt across France this summer.
Some police officers had asked that none of their colleagues be placed in pre-trial detention. The police officer accused of being responsible for the LBD shooting that hit Hedi was placed under judicial supervision on September 1. The public prosecutor of Marseille, Nicolas Bessone, wanted to recall “a few fundamentals”, such as the fact that “judges and prosecutors work in good harmony with the police every day to pursue offenders with the same protection objectives. Population “.
“Judges and prosecutors are fully aware of the extreme difficulty of the daily work of police officers” and “always take into account this context which can be further aggravated by riots to assess the proportionate use of force”, he added. “On the other hand, judges and prosecutors are fundamentally, like French society, attached to the principle of equality of all before the law and aspire to a republican police force which would not be above the law,” insisted the magistrate of one of the most important public prosecutors in France.