Urban repression. After Mohamed Bendriss, who died of a heart attack following a flash-ball shot and Abdelkarim Y., blinded in the eye by a bean bag shot, Raid police officers who intervened in Marseille during the riots following the death of Nahel in the summer of 2023 are once again blamed for suspicion of police violence.
Two men from this elite unit deployed in the streets of Marseille during these nights of riots were briefly heard in police custody this Wednesday, reports BFM Marseille. Although they emerged without indictment, unlike their colleagues in the two other cases cited, they remain suspected of having committed violence against Zachary C., a waiter in a brasserie in the Old Port who told Mediapart the attack suffered.
Caught in the heat of the riots
While returning home at the end of his service, the young Marseillais was caught in the middle of the riots. It was then that Zachary saw a police officer get out of his vehicle and shoot him with the LBD or “bean bag” from an estimated distance of “one to three meters”.
Hit in the groin, a police officer then puts him on the ground and handcuffs him while the wound opened by the shot bleeds profusely. Zachary then explains that the police are trying to attribute a bag of stolen items to him, before they give up and call the firefighters to evacuate him. He will have eleven stitches put in.
The story could have ended there, but Zachary C. filed a complaint on July 10 at the Noailles police station, before being heard two months later by the IGPN. Le Marseillais reports facts which allegedly occurred during the night of riots from June 30 to July 1, 2023. The investigation remains open with an investigating judge.