Audience drawing representing some of the 13 accused of the assault on police officers who had been burnt with a Molotov cocktail in Viry-Châtillon in 2016, October 15, 2019, during their trial at first instance at the Essonne Assize Court, in Évry. – Benoit PEYRUCQ / AFP
After six long and trying weeks of closed hearing, the verdict in the appeal trial of 13 young people accused of attacking and burning with Molotov cocktails by the police in Viry-Châtillon (Essonne) in 2016 is expected this Saturday evening in Paris. At 10 a.m., after the last words of the defendants, still in camera, the court withdrew to deliberate.
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, who are currently appearing free, had been acquitted. The Paris public prosecutor’s office had appealed against the verdict while the lawyers for the civil parties had denounced the sentences “which did not draw the conclusions” of the “gravity of the crime” committed.
“Requests of incredible severity”
For this appeal trial before the Paris Assize Court, the public prosecutor requested an acquittal on Tuesday and sentences ranging from 12 to 25 years in prison for the twelve other defendants. “In the guise of great humanity, these requisitions are incredibly severe,” denounced Alexandre Simonin, one of the defense lawyers. For Thibault de Montbrial, lawyer for a police officer targeted, it is a “solid and structured indictment but the scale of penalties requested is a little disconcerting”.
The 13 young people, aged 16 to 21 at the time of the facts, are accused of having been part of the twenty hooded people who, on October 8, 2016, stormed in the middle of the day two police cars parked nearby from the Grande Borne district, a vast social housing city considered to be one of the most sensitive in Île-de-France. Within seconds, they had smashed the windows and thrown Molotov cocktails into the cockpits.
“Marked for life”
In a first car, a 28-year-old security assistant and a 39-year-old female peacekeeper caught fire. The deputy’s life-threatening prognosis had been underway for a while and he had been plunged into a coma for several weeks. More than four years after the incident, he still bears the marks of the assault on his face.
Her colleague had been hit by stones when she got out of the torch-turned car, while her upper body was on fire. “I have children, help me,” one of his alleged attackers had heard him say, who later confided to a friend that it had made him “a pang in the heart”. Two officers managed to extricate themselves from the other car when a Molotov cocktail fell in the back seat. They had been injured more lightly.
“We are waiting for a fair sanction and exemplary sentences. During the first judgment, we found the sanctions a little too light “, explained Guillaume Roux, departmental secretary of Essonne of the SGP Police-FO unit union, denouncing the” barbarity of this act “and recalling that” (his) colleagues are marked for life ”.
La Grande Borne “under surveillance” this weekend
At the time, the affair made the whole political class react, President François Hollande criticizing an “unspeakable and intolerable” aggression and demanding “a sentence commensurate with the gravity” of the act. According to the investigation, the accused, members of a band from the Grande Borne, had planned a few days earlier to “fuck cops”.
This large city, which has thousands of homes, “will be placed under surveillance” this weekend, said a police source from Essonne. “But I don’t think this verdict will have local repercussions. Time has passed ”since the facts, added this source. The appeal trial, which began on March 2, was held behind closed doors, with three of the defendants being minors at the time of the crime.