Marseille, Aug 10 (AFP/APP): Three French police were charged on Thursday over a 27-year-old man’s death during nationwide rioting earlier this summer, prosecutors said, an uncommon instance of officers facing a criminal case over on-duty violence.
An autopsy of the man who died in Marseille during the riots showed marks on his chest consistent with the impact of a shot from a blast ball commonly used by police, prosecutors said.
The officers were arrested on Tuesday over the incident. It was the only known death at, or on the margins of, the unrest that gripped France in late June and early July over the killing of a teenager by a policeman during a traffic check outside Paris on June 27.
The riots were met by a forceful police response.
The man, Mohamed Bendriss — a married father of one whose widow is expecting a second child — died after feeling unwell while riding a scooter.
Prosecutors have said they consider 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 three will be charged with “armed violence unintentionally causing death”.
The prosecutor’s office also said the victim may have been involved in the looting of a shoe outlet in the city.
Indications were that Bendriss had been involved in theft from the shop and was being pursued by police as he rode his scooter away.
As he rode on the pavement past police, he was hit by one projectile.
Another — a so-called bean bag round — hit his scooter.
He rode on but was later found to have suffered cardio-respiratory arrest and died, the prosecutors said.
In all, five police officers from the elite Raid unit were taken into custody on Tuesday. Two were soon released.
– French police controversy –
Several civilians and police are giving evidence as witnesses in the case.
The officers will remain under judicial supervision. They are 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.
The investigation is the latest high-profile incident involving Marseille police.
The June 27 killing which first sparked the violent protests happened when a 17-year-old, named as Nahel, was shot during a police traffic stop.
A video of a police officer shooting a teen at point-blank range went viral, fuelling existing tensions over police brutality and racism in the country.
On Thursday, a court in Versailles upheld an earlier decision to detain the police officer suspected of fatally shooting Nahel.
The suspect, named as Florian M., a 38-year-old police motorcyclist, is under investigation for voluntary manslaughter over the death.
His lawyer, Laurent-Franck Lienard, told AFP he would appeal against the ruling, saying that his client’s detention was illegal and “not justified in law or in fact”.
Last month. a 22-year-old man called Hedi had to have part of his skull removed after being beaten up and fired on with a blast ball on July 21 by a group of men suspected to be police officers.
Four Marseille police officers have been charged over that incident.
Three have been released under judicial supervision.
The fourth has been remanded in custody for the duration of the investigation.
His detention caused huge controversy within the French police.
Officers across the country went on sick leave en masse as a sign of protest but a court rejected the appeal against his detention.
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