By Madame Le Cerf
Les émeutes de l’été 2023
In summer last year France suffered the worst riots since those of 2005. In fact, the very riots that the political class had been dreading for years and the avoiding of which had led to attitudes of “pas de vagues” (don’t make waves”) in many areas of social policy.
The precipitating event was the killing of a 17-year-old franco-algerian, Nahel Merzouk, on 27th June. He was shot by a policeman in Nanterre in the Hauts de Seine department. According to the police version of events the officer fired in legitimate self defence after Merzouk refused to stop the car he was driving.
This was contested by witnesses and by videos of the events which were put on social media and went viral. I watched one of those videos and have to say that while it was not entirely clear it did not seem to support a hypothesis of deliberate killing.
The policeman who fired, Florian M, was put under investigation for manslaughter and placed on remand on 29th June – very unusual given the danger to policemen in French prisons. He was a member of a unit which had been threatened with dissolution “compagnie de sécurisation et intervention” for department 93. This unit was the subject of 17 judicial inquiries for violence, racial slurs, illegal arrests, collusion with drug dealers and fraud. So not exactly choir boys. The procureur of Nanterre, Pascal Prack, judged that the conditions for use of the gun were not fully present. On the other hand, when giving details of the event at a press conference, he revealed that Merzouk was known to the police.
On 30th June one of the passengers in the car Merzouk was driving declared that Merzouk had been hit with the butt of a gun and that the third blow had caused him to lose his footing on the brake pedal, which caused the car to move forward due to the automatic gearbox. This is in conflict with the police version which says that Merzouk had switched off the engine when he was pulled over and then restarted it and started to pull away. The video I saw clearly shows the policeman being knocked backwards as the car begins to move. At that moment, his gun was pointing into the window on the driver’s side.
Merzouk was not the “innocent angel” Kyllian Mbappé had made out in an ill-advised tweet. He had no driving license and so should not have been at the wheel of the Mercedes. He had no rap sheet, never having been convicted, but he was known to the police for several driving offences and for drug use. He had been arrested twice before for refusing to stop when required by the police to do so -the last time only 5 days earlier.
According to the police version of events, the 5 motorcycle policemen involved noticed a Polish registered Mercedes-Benz class A driven quickly by a young person in a bus lane. They activated their flashing lights and sirens and when the car stopped at a red light, they signalled the driver to pull over. Instead of complying he ran the red light. They pursued him and during the chase he committed several infractions, including endangering the lives of a cyclist and a pedestrian on a crossing.
The car was eventually forced to stop at a roadblock. The driver obeyed a police order to wind down his window. They drew their guns, pointed them at him and told him to turn off the engine. The car moved off and Florian M fired once. The car crashed into a bollard and stopped. One of the passengers ran off and the other was arrested. They were minors aged 17 and 14. Merzouk was given first aid, but he was pronounced dead nearly an hour after the crash. The autopsy showed that he had died of a single shot which had gone through his left arm and traversed his thorax from left to right. So not shot in the head as some social media posts announced.
The two videos of the event contradict the police account to some extent. The first, around 50 seconds, filmed by a passer-by, showed that, at the moment the shot was fired, the policemen were beside the car and not in front of it and that it was not moving and could not hit them. The first 11 seconds of the video went viral and had been viewed 2.5 million times by the following evening. One of the policemen can be heard shouting “You’re going to get a bullet in your head” as he points his gun at the driver. According to different versions the officer says either “Shoot le” or “Coupe le” (Turn it off”) followed by something unintelligible. Then the engine starts up and the car moves forward slowly and the other policeman fires at point blank range.
The 14-year-old passenger in the back seat had been picked up by Merzouk and given a lift to school. He said he had no idea that Merzouk was only 17 and had no licence. He was quickly released. The front seat passenger was a childhood friend of Merzouk’s. after Merzouk had been shot, he ran away and said later that he had been afraid that he would be shot or beaten up. Like Merzouk he had a history of refusing to obey police orders to stop.
This incident took place in a fraught context. After the torching of a police vehicle with the police still inside it at Viry-Chatillon, the law governing police use of their guns was modified in February 2017, bringing it into line with the law which applied to gendarmes. This allowed the police to shoot at a vehicle if the driver was likely to injure themselves or others while in flight from the police. The wording of the law was ambiguous and allowed the police to act before any crime had been committed. As a result, there was a much greater incidence of fatalities caused by policemen shooting at fleeing vehicles. So, Nahel Merzouk was certainly not the first person to be shot dead by the police in such circumstances. Not even the first in 2023. But what followed was quite different. Several sports personalities like footballer Kyllian Mbappé, rappers, actors and journalists criticised the actions of the police. L’Humanité published a tribute signed by more than 100 French and international personalities, including Angela Davis, Judith Butler, Ken Loach and Eric Cantona. Before any investigation even started Emmanuel Macron came out and said that the death was “inexplicable” and “inexcusable.
Shockingly, in the opinion of many French people, the National Assembly observed a minute of silence “to the memory of Nahel, in support of his parents and friends”.
Deputies of the LFI tried to stir things up. David Guèrand (who later distinguished himself at a conference in Tunisia by casting doubt on Hamas’ crimes and, in particular, the rapes, of 7th October) refused to call for calm claiming that he was calling for justice.
The riots started in Nanterre in the evening of 27th June, the day of Nahel’s death. From there they spread to the rest of France and also to Belgium and Switzerland. Several districts of Nanterre were affected. The rioters burned vehicles, bus stops and rubbish bins and vandalised several buildings including a music school which was set on fire. They fired fireworks at the police. The car burning spread to other areas around Paris. Similar incidents took place in Bordeaux, Lille, Creteil and Roubaix.
On 28th June, 2000 police and gendarmes were deployed to counter the risk of further riots. Police stations and mairies were attacked. Schools and shops, including supermarkets were set on fire. Then the looting started and spread to Amiens, Dijon, Lyon, St. Étienne, Clermont-Ferrand and Strasbourg.
On 29th June there was a march to pay homage to Merzouk. The memorial to the Resistance and Deportation was daubed with anti-semitic slogans. Darmanin (the interior minister) announced the deployment of 40,000 police and gendarmes including units specialising in terrorist incidents. Valerie Pécresse, President of the Ile de France region, announced that buses and trams would not run after 9pm throughout the region. Several communes in the region decided to install a curfew from 9pm to 6am until 3rd July. In Lille buses and trams were halted at 8pm.
The burning and looting continued, spreading to the whole of France, including small towns which had remained untouched by the 2005 riots. A large variety of places were attacked and burned – schools, pharmacies, shops, bars, restaurants, charity offices and banks. The night of 29th June also saw the first attacks on mayors.
The violence continued on 30th June with Strasbourg, Lyon and Marseille suffering a lot of looting in the city centres. Many police officers were injured in these confrontations. Firemen were also attacked as were some of the journalists trying to cover the events. The looting spread to smaller towns. Two police unions covering nearly half of all officers put out a bellicose bulletin which referred to “hordes of savages and vermin” and warned that their actions would be closely scrutinised by officers who were “resisting”. This was denounced by most of the left as having a “seditious” character and being a call to civil war.
Various communities in trouble spots were overflown by drones collecting information. There were rumours that in some places civilians were helping the police fight back against the rioters.
Again, Darmanin mobilised 45,000 police and gendarmes. A GoFundMe type collection was organised for the benefit of the family of the policeman who was under investigation, and this further incensed the rioters, particularly when it became known that the amount donated very quickly grew to exceed by far the sum collected for Merzouk’s mother. Despite the massive police mobilisation, 350 cars were burnt and 266 buildings were vandalised, including 24 schools, 26 mairies, 31 police stations and 11 gendarmerie barracks.
The violence continued sporadically before petering out about the 5th of July. One of the worst incidents was an attack on the home of the mayor of L’Haie-des-Roses, Vincent Jeanbrun. A blazing car was driven into his house at about 1.30 am. His wife and children aged 5 and 7 had to flee. His wife fractured her knee while running away from the rioters and one of the children was also hurt. Rudy Manna, spokesperson for the police union Alliance Sud, said that the rioting ended at the demand of drug barons whose businesses were suffering.
The average profile of the rioters was younger than had been the case in 2005. One third of those arrested were minors and 60% had no previous convictions. Many were motivated simply by the opportunity to loot and by general defiance of authority. Only 8% of those arrested said they were motivated by the death of Nahel Merzouk. The violence against the police was much worse than in 2005 with 723 officers hurt in a week compared to 224 in over 3 weeks in 2005. The total cost in damaged cars and buildings has been estimated at more than 1 billion euros.
The reaction to the rioting was mixed. The Government reaction was very similar to that of the present UK government to the rioting after the stabbing of young girls at a Taylor Swift dance workshop in Southport. The Justice Minister, Eric Dupont-Moretti, called for a firm penal response and people arrested and charged appeared immediately before judges. Many were given immediate prison sentences despite youth and previously clean records. Left-wing publications like Liberation tut tutted about this. More than 4,000 people, a third of them minors, were arrested. Over half of these were taken to court where the conviction rate was 94%. 1,239 were sent to prison with average sentences of 8.9 months, harsher sentencing than for those involved in the 2005 riots.
The political reaction was mixed with LFI stirring things as usual refusing to condemn the rioting and labelling the police “killers”. They laid stress on the injuries to rioters and looters and people who attacked the police who were sent to deal with the disorder. Most of those injuries were caused by “Flash Ball” a non-lethal weapon which caused serious injuries including blindness and brain damage when used against the Gilets Jaunes in 2018/9. Various inquiries into the conduct of the police were set up.
The LFI deputy, David Guirand, said “It’s the police who need to calm down…..I am not calling for calm but for justice.”. He took up the “No justice no peace” slogan used by the demonstrators. This approach was followed by Marie Tondelier of the Greens in contrast to the Communist leader, Fabien Roussel, who called for calm. Politicians on the right condemned the rioting and looting unequivocally and called for the declaration of a state of emergency. The government was criticised for excessive laxity. There were rumours that the government had ordered the police not to try to suppress the rioting so as to avoid further deaths.
There was controversy over the profile of the rioters. To start with the government had tried to make out that they had names like Kevin and Matteo, i.e. European. In reality, according to the Prefecture de Police about 79% were French nationals and 2nd or 3rd generation of North or sub-Saharan African immigrants.
The numbers involved were also disputed – Darmanin putting forward a figure of 8,000-13,000 while the Senate Law Committee suggested 50,000 and the former Director of External Security thought that it was 100,000-200,000. 60% of those arrested had no previous records and many were minors.
There was a lot of controversy about various municipalities’ reaction to the rioters. Many comments resulted in accusations of “stigmatisation” from parents living in what are euphemistically called “quartiers populaires”. There were calls for the names of perpetrators to be revealed. At Blanc Mesnil the municipality decided to deprive the residents – many of them too poor to afford a holiday- of their summer “urban beach” and their annual 14th July dance and fireworks. The reason given was to save money to go towards repairing the damage caused during the riots.
The events gave rise to the diffusion of polemics hostile to immigration. According to a survey done for Le Figaro 84% of French people denounced the violence that followed the death of Nahel. Only LFI supporters differed from this view with 60% of them saying they understood the rioters. There was popular support (64%) for the police but only 24% of those surveyed were satisfied with the actions taken by the government. Many saw the events as the consequence of the government’s failure to curb immigration.
The riots were closely scrutinised internationally by the media who looked through the lens of the French model of integration and posed questions about police violence. The Polish head of the Council of Ministers, Mateutz Morawiecki, pointed out the contrast between the scenes of chaos on French streets and the quietness of Polish towns and cities as showing clearly “a link between the rioting in France and the porosity of European borders.”.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan blamed the “colonial past” and “institutional racism” as the root of this upsurge of violence and said that most of the immigrants who were forced to live in ghettos and subjected to systematic oppression were Muslims.
In the UK the Daily Telegraph proclaimed that the world was looking on in disbelief as France tore itself apart and Macron lost control of the country. In Germany Der Bild echoed the Polish minister’s comments and reported on the rioters’ repeated calls of “Allahu Akbar” and the commission of antisemitic acts. The French legacy press was keen not to report this as any suggestion of a connection to Islam had to be brushed under the carpet. The New York Times insisted on the “profound resentment” of the banlieues against the racist police.
Macron’s assertion that the rioters were just playing out video games was widely scoffed at as mere obfuscation devoid of scientific foundation. The politicians were accused of unwillingness to confront the very real problems stemming from uncontrolled immigration and failure to assimilate the French born descendants of immigrants.
The far left stuck to its guns-it was the fault of the trigger-happy racist police and the events were not rioting but urban revolutions.
The government introduced various measures later in the year intended to re-establish “republican law and order”. The penalty for non-respect of curfews was increased five-fold to 750€ and the parents of delinquent children were required to contribute to the cost of repairs necessitated by their vandalism.The Senate put forward various propositions on the functioning of social media, the sale of large fireworks and steps to to ensure better co-ordination of police forces.
A year on nothing much has changed and the French are waiting for the next conflagration.
A reconstruction of the events took place on 5th May this year. Experts in ballistics, forensic medicine and accident analysis were present. They produced a report which verified some of the versions put forward by the police but also conflicting points coming from third party witnesses and the two passengers in the vehicle. It was found that the police were correct in claiming that Merzouk had restarted the engine and deliberately accelerated before the shot was fired. He had not been stunned by blows from the butt of the gun wielded by one of the officers and that no such blows had caused him to lose control of the brake pedal. The pathologist reported that bruises discovered on Merzouk’s right arm during the autopsy had been caused 18 hours before his death and that there were no other traces of blows. He stated that, even if the witnesses’ claims that Merzouk had been struck were accurate, it could not possibly be the case that the blows had stunned him and made him lose control of his actions.
On the other hand, the notion of imminent danger which the police claimed justified the shot as legitimate defence was not validated by the expert in accident analysis. He noted that the steering wheel was not pointed towards the police and that the acceleration was weak. The counsel for the defence of the two policemen will dispute this and the point will be crucial in the case of Florian M who fired the shot. That policeman continues to assert that he fired because he was being pushed backwards and feared being crushed against the wall behind him. He also maintains that he tried to shoot downwards and had no intention of killing Merzouk but feared that if Merzouk drove off he would end up killing someone.
The fears of the police in such situations are not paranoid fantasies. On Monday 26th August Eric Comyn, a 54 year old gendarme, was killed on the A8 motorway near Mougins in Alpes-Maritimes as a result of a refusal to stop for a police check. The perpetrator, a 39-year old Cap Verdian, had 10 convictions and a source in the Interior Ministry has leaked that he has been known to the police since 2006 for violence, persistent refusals to stop for police checks, driving without a licence and, in 2023, drunk driving.
Comyn’s widow declared that it was France which had killed her husband because of the laxity and excessive tolerance shown to criminals here. There are probably millions of French people who agree with her.
