Nothing to say, yet
Transcription
A police officer in France has been charged with voluntary killing after shooting a 17-year-old Sahel. This has sparked violent protests across the country, with barricades, fires, and clashes between police and protesters. President Macron is cutting his EU summit short to hold an emergency security meeting. Schools, town halls, and police stations have also been targeted by protesters. The officer who shot the teenager claims he feared being hit by the car, but this explanation has been criticized. Similar incidents have occurred in other Western countries. The unrest is reminiscent of the riots in 2005 following the deaths of two teenagers. France has seen calls for more police accountability, especially in cases involving the use of firearms. Hello and welcome to this episode of the Diary of a Lawyer. Today I want to briefly talk about the charging of a police officer in France with a voluntary killing, a charge of voluntary killing of a 17 year old Sahel who was apparently shot point blank according to the videos released and witnesses over a traffic infraction. Now this has led to protests all over the country which have turned violent and has led to hundreds of people being arrested. Protesters erected barricades, lit fires and shot fires at police in French streets overnight as tensions grew over the deadly police shooting of a 17 year old that has shocked not just the nation but the whole world. Now armoured police vehicles according to public reports and media reports such as NPR ran through the charged remains of cars that had been flipped and set ablaze in the northern western Paris suburb of Nanterre where police officers shot the teen identified only by his first name, Nahel. Now on the other side of Paris, protests lit a fire at the city hall of the suburb of Clichy-sur-Bois and set ablaze in Auberville, the French capital of soft fires and some stores ransacked. In the Mediterranean port city of Marseille which has a huge population of people of African descent, in particular North Africa, police reportedly sought to disperse violent groups in the city centre according to authorities. Now the President Macron planned to leave an EU summit in Brussels where France plays a major role in European policy making to return to Paris and hold an emergency security meeting Friday. Now some 40,000 police officers were deployed to call the protests and hundreds were detained. It's also reported around 200 police officers were injured according to police spokesperson. Schools, town halls and police stations also faced protesters and the interior minister Gerard Tavanin Friday denounced what he called a night of rare violence and his office described the arrest as a sharp increase on previous operations as part of an overall government effort to be extremely firm with rioters according to him. Effectively the government has stopped short of declaring a state of emergency which is a measure taken to quell weeks of rioting around France that followed the accidental death of two boys fleeing police in 2005. So this is not isolated as we have seen other incidents but it's not just France we see other similar incidents in other Western countries. The police officer accused of pulling the trigger Tuesday was handed a preliminary charge of voluntary homicide after the prosecutor Pascal Prasche said his initial investigation led him to conclude the conditions of the legal use of a weapon were not met. Preliminary charges mean investigating magistrates strongly suspect wrongdoing but need to investigate more before sending a case to trial. The data haven't seen the identity and the names of the police officer charged with voluntary homicide but his lawyer speaking on French TV channel say the officer was sorry and devastated. The officer did what he thought was necessary in the moment a Tony Lawrence for polite told the news outlet which is unfathomable and the shooting captured on video shocked France and set up long simmering tensions between police and young people in housing projects and other disadvantaged neighborhoods. The teenagers family and their lawyers haven't said the police shooting was race related and they didn't release his son name or details about him. Still anti-racist racism activists renew their complaints about police behavior and some are quoted as saying that they have to go beyond saying that things need to calm down said Dominique Sopo head of the campaign group SOS racism and he says the issue here is how do we make it so that we have police force that when they see blacks and Arabs don't need to shout at them use racist terms against them and in some cases shoot them in the head. In Nanta a peaceful march that was the afternoon in Onovna Hill was followed by escalating confrontations with smoke billowing from cars and garbage bins set ablaze. Tensions also rose in places across France throughout the day and in the usually tranquil Pyrenees town of Pau in southwestern France according to NPR a Molotov cocktail was thrown at a police officer and vikers were set on fire in Toulouse and a trauma train was torched in the suburb of Lyon police said. There are the protests in other towns like Clermont and other places and Caffieu was announced in the town of Neu-sur-Mont in the eastern suburbs. Now the unrest extended as far as Brussels the Belgian capital city and EU administrative hub where about 10,000 people were detained during scuffles related to the shooting in France. Police spokeswoman Iovande Keir say that several fires were brought under control. Now according to some of the facts sketchy facts we know the Nanta a prosecutor say the officers tried to stop Nahal because he looked so young and was driving a Mercedes with Polish license plates in a bus lane. He allegedly ran a red light to avoid being stopped and got stuck in traffic. Both officers say they drew their guns to prevent him from fleeing. The officer who fired the shot said he had fear he and his colleagues someone else could be hit by the car according to Price. Now that is inexplicable so he shot the boy because he thought the car would hit him. We just leave that there. So the scenes in France suburbs echoed 2005 when the losses of life of two 15 year old and a 17 year old born at Troy and Zee Elbena led to three weeks of riots exposing anger and resentment in various housing neighborhoods. The boys were electrocuted after hiding from police in a power station in Clichy-sur-Bois. Now deadly use of firearms is less common in France than in other countries like the US although several people have been killed or been wounded by French police in recent years which has prompted demands for more accountability. According to NPR France also saw protests against racial injustice after George Floyd's killing by police in Minnesota. A police spokesperson said certain people who didn't comply with traffic stops were fatally shot by police last year. This year three people including Nahel have died in similar circumstances. Another tragic story and senseless loss of life a 17 year old Nahel over a traffic infraction. Again we shall watch developments and we'll focus on the charges that the prosecutor has brought on the officer that killed Nahel of voluntary homicide because he believes that the conditions for the legal use of weapon were not met. And so there we shall leave it on yet another episode of the Tired of a Lawyer and we shall speak again. Thanks for listening. Thank you. Bye.
