The young Nahel, shot Tuesday by a policeman, was buried on Saturday in the outskirts of Paris, after a fourth night of protests and looting that shocked France, raised concerns about its economic impact and forced President Emmanuel Macron to postpone a visit. To Germany.
Authorities mobilized 9,000 riot police on Wednesday, increased the contingent to 40,000 on Thursday, 45,000 the following day and indicated on Saturday that they would keep it at the same level in anticipation of another hectic night.
The 17-year-old Nahel’s funeral was held in Nanterre, the municipality northwest of Paris where he lived, without the presence of cameras at the family’s request.
Hundreds of people gathered in front of the funeral home in a mosque and then headed to the Mont-Valérien cemetery for the burial, AFP journalists reported.
“It was a very calm ceremony, of recollection and without incidents”in the presence of the young man’s mother and grandmother, a witness told AFP.
The riots on Friday night and early Saturday morning were less intense than in previous days, although there were major outrages in Marseille and Lyon, the second and third largest cities in the country 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 that night left 1,350 vehicles burned or damaged and 1,234 buildings set on fire, according to the official balance.
The riots have disrupted social life in France, with fears that it will affect the 2023 tourist season and just one year before the 2024 Paris Olympics.
Britain, Germany and Norway, among other countries, have warned their citizens in France to avoid riot zones and exercise caution.
Fashion label Céline has canceled its menswear show scheduled for Sunday. Its creative director, Hedi Slimane, evoked “the uncertain evolution of these serious disturbances”as well as “inappropriate” what would it be to do “a fashion show at a time when France and its capital are mourning and devastated.”
The government organized a new crisis meeting and Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne asked the ministers to stay in Paris for the weekend.
President Macron postponed a two-day visit to Germany, scheduled to start on Sunday.
Macron “informed his German counterpart, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, of the situation in his country” and requested “postpone his state visit to Germany”reported a statement from the German Presidency.
Racism
Nahel, whose family hails from Algeria, was shot during a traffic checkpoint by two officers while driving a rental car 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, who had had other entanglements with agents for acts of the same type, had tried to ram the agents with his vehicle. But a widely circulated amateur video showed that he was executed at point blank range.
The UN called on the French authorities on Friday to deal seriously with the “deep” problems of “racism and racial discrimination” among their security forces.
The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs replied that these considerations were “completely 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 pretrial detention for voluntary manslaughter for the 38-year-old police officer who shot, who, according to his lawyer, asked for “sorry to the family” by Nahel.
The violence must stop
Authorities imposed curfews in at least three towns in the Paris region and in several other cities across the country.
Marseille (south), Lyon and Grenoble (central-east) were the scene of numerous looting last night, carried out by groups with people often hooded.
On Saturday morning, the merchants took stock of the damage, outraged.
«On Monday, (…) I put everything up for sale, that’s enough»said the owner of a shop on a rubble-strewn pedestrian street in central Lyon.
“They came expressly to break things, steal”said Yousef Bettahar, a shopkeeper at the Merlan shopping center in Marseille.
The French soccer team, led by Kylian Mbappé, stated in a statement that “the time of violence must stop” and leave room for “peaceful and constructive ways to express yourself.”
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