Florian M., the policeman who killed a 17-year-old boy, Nahel, on Tuesday last week at a control in Nanterre – on the western outskirts of Paris – will remain in pretrial detention. This was decided yesterday by the Versailles Court of Appeals.
The hearing was held by videoconference. The 38-year-old agent was in the Santé prison in the capital. His lawyer, Laurent-Franck Liénard, expressed to the media his criticism of justice for acting conditioned by street pressure, for fear of new riots such as those that caused a hell of fire and destruction in many French cities.
According to Liénard, his client did not want to kill Nahel, but fired his weapon because he felt he was in danger, just 40 centimeters from a wall. He was afraid that the boy, behind the wheel of a Mercedes, would swerve and crush him and a colleague, who were standing next to the vehicle. The lawyer stressed that Florian B. is mentally devastated and experiences the situation as "a nightmare".
Conflicting versions have emerged about some details of the tragic episode, whether Florian M.'s partner yelled “disconnect” or “shoot”, and whether the policeman had previously threatened the boy with “putting a bullet in your head”. Florian B. denies it. The only certainty is that Nahel received a fatal shot in the thorax.
The President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, spoke yesterday about what happened during a visit to Pau, in the department of the Atlantic Pyrenees. He congratulated himself that "order" and "calm" had been restored, he wished for "harmony" and promised that "we will continue working to solve the problem of the neighborhoods." The head of state was surprised by the level of violence of the young people who participated in the riots and admitted that social networks had to do with the phenomenon. All in all, Macron's reaction is being discreet. He has so far avoided dealing with the matter in a more formal way, for example, through a televised address.
In anticipation of another outbreak of violence, French police are trying to remove large quantities of illegally traded artifice mortars from circulation. In just twenty-four hours, there was the seizure in the Parisian region of nearly 900 kilos of this pyrotechnic material that in theory can only be purchased by professionals in the sector, but in practice it is sold without problems on the black market via the Internet. The gangs that engage in vandalism and looting buy artifice mortars to fight with the police, to confuse them and also to cause fires. Launched directly at officers, they can severely injure and even kill them. They are a leisure material that, due to its explosive charge, becomes a powerful urban guerrilla weapon.
Last night there was maximum alert in Marseille due to fear of incidents after a protest march for the death of a young delivery driver, last Saturday night, probably due to the impact of a rubber bullet.
