Teenager’s Shooting: Police Arrest Over 400 Persons In France Riots

• As accused Officer apologises for shooting teenager

More than 400 people have been arrested across France as violence spreads to cities across the country with the officer involved in the shooting apologising that he did not intend to kill the driver.

Local media reported that 420 people had been arrested as of 3.30 am on Friday, citing figures from the Interior Ministry, after 40,000 police officers were deployed across the country, nearly four times the numbers earlier mobilised on Wednesday.

Official reports indicated that the arrests were made as unrest spread to major cities during a third night of riots triggered by the deadly police shooting of a teenager of Algerian and Moroccan descent during a traffic stop.

At least three towns around Paris, including Clamart, Compiègne, and Neuilly-sur-Marne, imposed full or partial night-time curfews as a police intelligence report leaked to French media predicted “widespread urban violence over the coming nights”.

This is as reports emerged that the policeman, who shot dead a 17-year-old known as Nahel M in Nanterre, a suburb west of central Paris, for fleeing a traffic check and failing to comply with an order to stop his car on Tuesday, has apologised to the victim’s family while in custody.

Attorney Laurent-Franck Lienard, the lawyer representing the officer, said he has offered an apology to the teen’s family. According to him; “The first words he pronounced were to say sorry and the last words he said were to say sorry to the family”.

Speaking to BFMTV about the accused officer, Lienard said; “He is devastated, he doesn’t get up in the morning to kill people.”

Lienard said the officer had aimed down toward the driver’s leg but was bumped, causing him to shoot toward his chest. “He had to be stopped, but clearly didn’t want to kill the driver,” he said, adding that his client’s detention was being used to try to calm rioters.

The 38-year-old officer was on Thursday placed under formal investigation for voluntary homicide, the equivalent in Anglo-Saxon jurisdictions of being charged.

Nanterre public prosecutor Pascal Prache said on Thursday that Nahel died from a single shot through his left arm and chest while driving off after being stopped by police. The officer said he had opened fire because he feared that he and his colleague or someone else could be hit by the car, according to Prache.

“The public prosecutor considers that the legal conditions for using the weapon have not been met,” Prache said.

Nahel was known to police for previously failing to comply with traffic stop orders, Prache said.

Meanwhile, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, who called for “support for our police, gendarmes, and firefighters who are doing a brave job”, was pictured by French media at police headquarters in Paris in the early hours of Friday.

In Nanterre, protesters torched cars, barricaded streets, and hurled projectiles at police after a peaceful vigil and march led by Nahel’s mother descended into violence.

Protesters scrawled “Vengeance for Nahel” across buildings and as night set in a bank was set on fire before firefighters put it out and an elite police unit deployed an armoured vehicle. As the night advanced violent skirmishes between rioters and police also broke out in Lille, Toulouse, Marseille, Lyon, Pau, and Montpellier.

In central Paris, Nike and Zara stores were vandalised and looted, Le Monde reported, with 14 arrests made. Further arrests were made after shop windows were smashed along the famous Rue de Rivoli shopping street.

In Montreuil, an eastern suburb, hundreds of youths attacked shops including a pharmacy and a McDonalds, while bins were set on fire outside the town hall. Police fired teargas in response. Similarly, in the western city of Nantes, a car was driven through the metal barriers of a Lidl store, which was subsequently also looted, Le Parisien reported.