The verdict for the five young people accused of burning police officers is less severe than at first instance, causing outrage. – Olivier Coret / Sipa
“Incomprehensible”, “shocking”, “disturbing”: the verdict in the appeal trial of the violent attack on the police in Viry-Châtillon (Essonne) in 2016 aroused the indignation of several police unions this Sunday.
On the night of Saturday to Sunday, the Paris Assize Court for minors sentenced five young people to terms ranging from 6 to 18 years imprisonment and acquitted the other eight defendants, a verdict less severe than at first instance. The accused faced life imprisonment.
An “incomprehensible” verdict
This verdict “is incomprehensible and leaves the victims and many police officers very bitter and angry,” responded Grégory Joron, Deputy Secretary General of Unit, quoted in a press release. “There is anger, a lot of disappointment. With the same evidence, we end up with fewer culprits and less severe sentences than at first instance, ”he added.
“Today, I think of my fellow victims, left to their fate, who should not feel repaired for the damage they have suffered,” continued Grégory Joron. “When we see at the end the insults, the fights, it suggests, whatever one says about it, to a form of shipwreck”, he added, referring to the general fight which broke out during the reading of the verdict and which required the intervention of about thirty police and gendarmes.
Call for gatherings
After this decision “sickening and disturbing which will leave traces, violence, the throwing of Molotov cocktails, the mortar fire will continue, nothing will change”, for his part regretted Guillaume Roux departmental secretary of the union Essonne SGP Police-FO unit.
For his counterpart from the Alliance union in Essonne, Claude Carillo, it is also a “shocking verdict”: “to put an end to all forms of delinquency, we need firm and exemplary sanctions”. The union called for rallies on Tuesday at 12:30 p.m. in front of the courthouse in Paris, on the Île de la Cité, as well as before all the courts of France and overseas.
Molotov Cocktail Attack
In the first trial, eight defendants were found guilty and sentenced to terms ranging from 10 to 20 years in prison. Five others had been acquitted. The 13 young people, aged 16 to 21 at the time of the facts, were accused of having been part of the twenty hooded people who, on October 8, 2016, had attacked with Molotov cocktails two police cars parked near the sensitive area. from the Grande Borne.
Two policemen, a man and a woman, had been badly burned. One of them, a security assistant, had been plunged into a coma for several weeks and still bears the marks of the assault on his face more than four years after the incident.