The policeman who opened fire on Nahel, the 17-year-old boy killed on Tuesday in Nanterre near Paris, was investigated for “voluntary homicide” and placed in temporary detention.
Clashes between the police and young Frenchmen continued tonight. The tensions began last Thursday at the end of the "white march" led by the mother of the young victim in which between 5 and 6 people took part.
Emmanuel Macron has postponed the state visit to Germany which should have started today.
After the attacks on police stations, schools and town halls Macron convened the Interministerial Crisis Unit a Beauveau. “The attacks on institutions are unjustifiable,” he said. 40 agents mobilised. He asked that the Interministerial Crisis Unit take care of "the preparation of the next few days so that complete calm can return".
In Nanterre a bank was set on fire and the flames threatened nearby homes. There are 20 people arrested. In Marseille, clashes between protesters and police at the Old Port, evacuated by the police. In Lyon, where a building was set on fire in the Villeurbanne district on Wednesday, a helicopter from the RAID, the special anti-riot units, was sent. Riots also in the center of Paris, where at least a hundred people with their faces covered by balaclavas looted the shops of the Les Halles shopping centre. According to Le Figaro, which cites high-level sources, 719 people were arrested throughout the country in the night alone.
But the situation is not destined to improve. In a note from the French services, quoted by a police source, we read that "a propagation" of the violence is expected in the "next nights". The note, which several French media relaunched on Thursday evening, underlines that the "next nights will be the scene of urban violence with a tendency to spread" and with "targeted actions on the forces of order and the symbols of the state or public power".
In the night between Friday and Saturday, 1.300 people involved in the clashes were arrested throughout France and 30% of those arrested were minors.
In the alleys of Nanterre the atmosphere is very heavy: the teenagers protect the place where the body of the 17-year-old killed by the policeman is placed. They do not allow videotaping or photography to respect the privacy and grief of Nahel's family.
The policemen, the kids on the street say, take it out on those like them, meaning the "Arabs", and in particular on the defenceless.
In the meantime, the white coffin arrives with a packed mosque intoning the Salat al-Janazah, the funeral prayer of the Islamic rite.
The imam calls for peace, calling for a halt to the protest. Then Nahel's coffin left the mosque to enter the hearse, heading for Mont Valérien, where he is buried.
The revolt infects Switzerland: clashes in Lausanne
It also infected her Switzerland the violent protest that followed the killing by the police of a young man in Nanterre, in the Parisian banlieue: incidents were reported in the center of Lausanne in the evening, as reported by the online media "20 minutes".
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