Three French police charged over man’s death during riots

Three French police officers were charged on Thursday over the death of a 27-year-old man in the southern city of Marseille in early July during nationwide rioting, prosecutors said.

Published: 10 August 2023 16:42 CEST

Three French police charged over man's death during riots

French riot police officers next to a burning out trash bin during rioting in Marseille. Illustration photo by CLEMENT MAHOUDEAU / AFP

The three will be charged with “armed violence”, the prosecutor said, after the autopsy of the man who died during riots showed marks on his chest consistent with the impact of a shot from a blast ball commonly used by police.

The three are also banned from having any contact with plaintiffs in the case, and from participating in any police contingent concerned with urban riot control or large-scale events.

They had been arrested on Tuesday over the incident, the only known death linked to the unrest that gripped France in late June and early July over killing of a teenager by a policeman during a traffic check outside Paris on June 27th.

The riots were met by a forceful police response.

The man, Mohamed Bendriss – a married father of one whose widow is now expecting a second child – died after feeling unwell while riding a scooter.

The prosecutor’s office has said it considers it “probable” that the man’s death was “caused by a violent impact to the thorax caused by the firing of a projectile of the blast ball type”.

The decision by the prosecutor comes after a separate case in which four Marseille officers were charged with a violent assault on a 21-year-old man, which also took place during the rioting. He was so badly injured that surgeons had to remove a large part of his skull to save his life.

After one of the charged officers was remanded in custody, police in Marseille called in sick en masse in protest, while officers across the country placed themselves on restricted duties – essentially refusing to respond to non-emergency calls.

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The French Jewish community, the third largest in the world, has for months been on edge in the face of a growing number of attacks and desecrations of memorials.

“National police in Rouen neutralised early this morning an armed individual who clearly wanted to set fire to the city’s synagogue,” Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Police responded at 6.45 am to reports of “fire near the synagogue”, a police source said.

A source close to the case told AFP the man “was armed with a knife and an iron bar, he approached police, who fired. The individual died”.

“It is not only the Jewish community that is affected. It is the entire city of Rouen that is bruised and in shock,” Rouen Mayor Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol wrote on X.

He made clear there were no other victims other than the attacker.

Two separate investigations have been opened, one into the fire at the synagogue and another into the circumstances of the death of the individual killed by the police, Rouen prosecutors said.

Such an investigation by France’s police inspectorate general is automatic whenever an individual is killed by the police.

The man threatened a police officer with a knife and the latter used his service weapon, said the Rouen prosecutor.

The dead man was not immediately identified, a police source said.

Asked by AFP, the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office said that it is currently assessing whether it will take up the case.

France has the largest Jewish community of any country after Israel and the United States, as well as Europe’s largest Muslim community.

There have been tensions in France in the wake of the October 7th attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas on Israel, followed by the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip.

Red hand graffiti was painted onto France’s Holocaust Memorial earlier this week, prompted anger including from President Emmanuel Macron who condemned “odious anti-Semitism”.

“Attempting to burn a synagogue is an attempt to intimidate all Jews. Once again, there is an attempt to impose a climate of terror on the Jews of our country. Combating anti-Semitism means defending the Republic,” Yonathan Arfi, the president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF). wrote on X.

France was hit from 2015 by a spate of Islamist attacks that also hit Jewish targets. There have been isolated attacks in recent months and France’s security alert remains at its highest level.