Accused of having dismantled Jérôme Rodrigues in Paris, a police officer risks up to 15 years in prison

On January 26, 2019, while everywhere in France yellow vests surge in the streets, Je Mérôd Rodrigues is seriously injured in the eye during a Place de la Bastille event in Paris. The policeman suspected of having dismantled the demonstrator with a grip grenade will be tried before the departmental criminal court, we learned from a source close to the file on Friday.

“The culmination of the fight of victims of police violence”

Two investigating judges ordered on Friday that Brice C., 34, either judged for voluntary violence which caused mutilation or permanent infirmity by person depository of the public authority in the exercise of his functions, or a crime liable to fifteen years of criminal imprisonment, according to the order of indictment consulted by AFP.

“This decision is the culmination of the fight of victims of police violence during the movement of yellow vests,” reacted to AFP Me SinJérôme Rodrigues' lawyer, 45, who definitively lost the use of his right eye.

“Behind the policeman who will be tried in criminal court, the national police, the Paris police headquarters and the policy of Emmanuel Macron during the yellow vests movement who will be judged, ”he added.

On the other hand, the investigating judges ordered a not for a second police officersuspected of having injured Michaël, a friend of Jérôme Rodrigues, by a launcher of defense balls (LBD), in his leg (LBD).

The two police officers had been my exam In January 2021 for having injured the two men.

Self -defense not retained

As a reminder, on January 26, 2019, these police officers, members of intervention companies (CSI), worked as part of a tense demonstration of “yellow vests”, place de la Bastille in Paris. Many projectile jets From demonstrators on the police had required the use of a water launcher and tear gas grenades, recall the two magistrates. It was in this context that Jérôme Rodrigues had been injured in the eye.

Brice C.'s lawyer argued that he had acted “in a state of self -defense “, The grenade throwing having intervened” in an insurrectional context “and” in the direction of people who infringed the physical integrity of the police “, it is specified in the order.

But the testimonies and videos analyzed during the investigations made it possible to establish that “the group in which Jérôme Rodrigues was evolving was not not violent“So did not constitute” a violent crowd […] Likely to allow the use of the public force, ”consider the investigating judges.

This criminal trial would be among the first on the violence committed by police during the demonstrations of the “yellow vests” who started in the fall of 2018. Another police officer, Fabrice T., will also be judgedBy the Paris Departmental Criminal Court for disgusting with a lacrymogen grenade Manuel Coisne, in November 2019.

With AFP.

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