The French government will mobilize 45,000 police officers on Saturday night to prevent riots, the same number as yesterday, although with reinforcements from riot units in Marseille, Lyon and Grenoble, after four consecutive nights of protests over the death of a young man at the hands of from the police.
The Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, announced the security device during a visit to the police station in the city of Dreux (west of Paris), in which he met with some agents who have participated in the operations of the past nights.
Obsequies of the young Nahel
The young Nahel was buried this Saturday on the outskirts of Paris, after a fourth night of protests and looting that shocked France and forced President Emmanuel Macron to suspend a state visit to Germany.
Nahel’s funeral was held in Nanterre, the municipality northwest of Paris where he lived, without the presence of a camera at the family’s request.
A large crowd gathered outside the funeral home at a local mosque and then headed to the Mont-Valérien cemetery for the burial, AFP journalists reported.
“May he rest in peace, may justice be done. I have come to support the mother, she had no one but him, ”an assistant told AFP, who did not want to give her name.
Less intense disturbances
France mobilized 45,000 police and gendarmes last night and the riots were somewhat less intense than in previous days, although major excesses were recorded in Marseille and Lyon, the country’s second and third cities respectively.
The Ministry of the Interior reported 1,300 arrests and 79 wounded policemen and gendarmes, with fifty attacks on police stations and a dozen on gendarmerie barracks, a military body with functions of maintaining order, especially in rural areas.
The incidents left 1,350 vehicles burned or damaged and 1,234 buildings set on fire, according to the official balance.
Debate on police racism
Nahel, whose family hails from Algeria, was shot after refusing to obey the orders of two officers during a traffic checkpoint in Nanterre.
The fact stirred up the debate on police racism, in a country where 13 people died in similar circumstances in 2022.
The first version of the police indicated that the young man had tried to ram the officers with his vehicle, but a widely circulated amateur video showed that he was shot at point blank range as he started his car during traffic control.
The UN on Friday called on the French authorities to seriously address the “deep” problems of “racism and racial discrimination” among their security forces.
The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs replied that these considerations were “totally unfounded.”
Mounia, the victim’s mother, told France 5 that she does not blame the police as a whole, only the officer who killed her son.
The court ordered preventive detention for voluntary manslaughter for the 38-year-old agent who shot, who, according to his lawyer, asked Nahel’s “forgiveness” family.
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