“The justice system knew from the start that it had to indict this police officer, but lacked courage in the face of all the pressures that existed in the case,” Yassine Bouzrou, lawyer for Ms. Redouane’s children, told AFP. .
The latter, residing in Algeria, are today “relieved” but also “angry”, he reported: “They do not understand why justice waited so long”.
The CRS was indicted on September 12 for involuntary homicide by a Lyon judge responsible for the investigation, the prosecution said, confirming information from the newspaper Le Monde. The case was moved to Lyon in 2019 due to suspicions, at the time, of collusion between the Marseille prosecutor's office and the police officers involved.
The accused is still working in the police, another source close to the case told AFP. Contacted by AFP, his counsel, Mr. Thibault de Montbrial, did not wish to speak.
“The search for individual responsibility” in this affair “raises questions for the commitment of agents who will be faced with the same situation tomorrow,” lamented Grégory Joron, general secretary of Un1té police, assuring the union’s support for the CRS.
On December 1, 2018, Zineb Redouane, an 80-year-old Algerian, was at her window, on the 4th floor of her building on the corner of Canebière in Marseille, when she received shards of a tear gas grenade in her face. fired from the street by the police, who were trying to disperse demonstrators below.
That day, a demonstration of “yellow vests” was coupled with a march against substandard housing in the Marseille city. Seriously injured, Zineb Redouane died the next day in hospital while under anesthesia. His death caused a great stir in public opinion.
“Red alert”
In 2020, an expert report submitted as part of the judicial investigation concluded that the police officer's shot had been carried out according to the rules (bell trajectory) and that the victim had been hit accidentally.
A few months later, the online investigative media Disclose and Forensic Architecture, a research group based in London, jointly published a counter-investigation validating the thesis of a so-called “tense” shooting, i.e. say direct, strictly prohibited in front of a residential building according to the regulations for the use of the weapon.
According to this document, which is based on the ballistic report, video surveillance images and detailed 3D modeling of the locations and the shooting in question, “from the position of the CRS at the time of the shooting, the presence of several buildings facing direct contact should have constituted, at the very least, a red alert.”
The ammunition used, an MP7 type grenade, according to this report reached Ms. Redouane “after 37 meters”, whereas it is “normally intended to hit a target located 100 meters away”.
In a report in 2021, the General Inspectorate of the National Police (IGPN) estimated that the CRS had indeed carried out a regulatory shot, without deliberately targeting the victim, but that it had failed in “the obligation of discernment by a manifestly inappropriate action.
In the conclusions of this report, the IGPN recommended his referral to the disciplinary council of the CRS responsible for the shooting, as well as that of his supervisor at the time of the facts.
This recommendation was not followed by the Director General of the National Police (DGPN) Frédéric Veaux. He had taken into account the “fatigue”, the “lack of visibility”, the “tension” and the “legally established necessity to shoot”, mentioned in the IGPN report, to exempt the CRS from a sanction disciplinary.
Today, Me Yassine Bouzrou wishes to request the indictment of the supervising police officer, and concerning the CRS indicted, the reclassification of the charge of involuntary homicide into “intentional violence leading to death without the intention of causing it”, he told AFP.
