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French police officer who shot teen released under supervision

The French police officer who shot dead a teenager at a traffic stop in June has been released from custody but remains under judicial supervision, prosecutors said on Wednesday.

Published: 15 November 2023 14:39 CET
French police officer who shot teen released under supervision
A pedestrian walks past a painted message on a wall reading "Nahel is the little brother of all Nanterre, no justice no peace" at the Pablo Picasso neighbourhood in Nanterre on July 1, 2023 (Photo by CHARLY TRIBALLEAU / AFP)

The officer fatally wounded Nahel M., 17, during a traffic stop in a suburb of Paris, an incident that unleashed riots across France, with massive police deployments unable to stem the protests for several nights.

Investigating magistrates agreed to the latest request by the officer’s lawyer for a conditional release, but said he is banned from speaking to witnesses or plaintiffs, going near the scene of the shooting and from carrying a weapon.

The 38-year-old officer, identified only as Florian M., has been charged with murder.

France deployed 45,000 officers backed by light armoured vehicles during the protests, while special police units and other security forces fanned out across the country to quell violence.

The unrest sparked by the killing of Nahel revived longstanding grievances about policing and racial profiling in France’s low income and multi-ethnic suburbs.

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POLICE

French authorities raid Goodyear tyre sites in ‘involuntary homicide’ probe

Investigators were on Tuesday searching three European sites belonging to American tyre giant Goodyear, French prosecutors said, as part of an "involuntary homicides" probe of crashes caused by burst truck tyres.

Published: 14 May 2024 16:38 CEST
French authorities raid Goodyear tyre sites in 'involuntary homicide' probe

“Simultaneous searches, mostly digital, began on Tuesday morning at Goodyear in France, in Luxembourg and at the company’s European HQ in Brussels,” said Etienne Manteaux, prosecutor in Besancon in eastern France.

An investigating magistrate in Besancon had issued a request for international assistance, Manteaux said.

“The aim of these searches is to find out how much Goodyear knew about how dangerous the Marathon LHS II and Marathon LHS II+ tyres were and how many incidents it was made aware of,” Manteaux told AFP.

Goodyear confirmed it was subject to searches and told AFP it was “cooperating fully” with the authorities.

Two truck drivers were killed on France’s A36 motorway in July 2014 when one of them lost control of his vehicle when his tyres burst.

Sophie Rollet, whose husband Jean-Paul died in the accident, filed a criminal complaint against Goodyear in 2016 after carrying out her own investigation.

The case is one of three under investigation by Besancon magistrates involving trucks equipped with the Goodyear tyre models under suspicion, in which a total of four people died.

All were caused by the front left tyre bursting, causing the drivers to lose control, according to investigators.

In each case, independent experts found that the tyres failed due to manufacturing defects in the metallic bands holding them together and the detachment of the tread.

Four more crash cases dating to 2011-14 have been added to the probe, although they are past the statute of limitations.

“Goodyear has never acknowledged a safety issue” even when pushed by truck builders Scania and Man, Manteaux said, while the manufacturers themselves urged operators to replace the affected tyres.

The company nevertheless launched an exchange programme for customers, dubbed “Tango”, in 2014, he added.

Goodyear “could have done a recall campaign, but this was a sales exchange: many companies didn’t respond because they weren’t told there was a safety problem,” Manteaux said.

“If a recall programme had been put in place, one might think these people (who died after March 2014) might still be alive,” he added.

A similar exchange scheme had been set up in Spain as early as 2013, Manteaux noted.

He added that a whistleblower had sent prosecutors “elements from Goodyear about compensation claims opened after similar incidents.

“There are many of them, in many European countries”.

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