Dressed all in black, a sports bag full of clothes placed on the dock, Kamal Amakran walks to the desk of the Marseille criminal court. “I don’t know what I was doing in the middle of the demonstration… I was there out of curiosity. Then there were smoke bombs from the CRS and it went from there”defends, in a low voice, the man with a youthful face, judged for “degrading the property of others by a means dangerous to people”.
“I followed without thinking, I took a bastaing, I put it in the fire and I left”he adds.
Aged 24, the Ajaccian was 21 at the time of the events, March 9, 2022. That evening, Corsica experienced another night of riots, on the sidelines of a demonstration in support of the nationalist activist Yvan Colonna, fatally attacked at the Arles central house a week earlier.
“A youthful mistake”
Gathered around the prefecture, the demonstrators were pushed back by the police, before heading towards the Ajaccio courthouse. Projectiles were thrown at the facade of the court, the gates of the square were forced, while fires were started, inside and outside the building, fueled by cardboard, paper, trash cans and other wooden pallets.
Confused by video surveillance images and videos circulating on social networks, Kamal Amakran was arrested a year and a half after the events and had admitted his involvement, from his first custody, regretting “a youthful mistake”.
“You were 22, not 15, you worked, you had no history, I don’t understand”sighs President Cécile Pendaries, skeptical of the defendant’s justifications. And to insist: “Were you paid? Do you have a problem with the justice system? Nationalist demands? Do you have a special link with Yvan Colonna?”.
“No way”repeats the one who, in 2022, held a job as a night watchman in an Ajaccian hotel.
€600,000 damage
The damage suffered by the Ajaccio court that night was estimated at nearly “600 000 €”, figures prosecutor Ahmed Chafai, who supports: “And a serious attack on justice. During this demonstration, a mini-excavator and a mini-loader were stolen. They were used to try to destroy the stele of Prefect Erignac.”
Kamal Amakran did not participate in these events. But by feeding the blaze with a 2.6 meter long beam stolen from a construction site, he “provided significant logistical support”points out the representative of the public prosecutor before demanding “a minimum of three years’ imprisonment”.
Requisitions qualified as“outrageous” by the defense, who denounces “an injustice”. “The act committed against the judicial institution is unforgivablepleads Me Philippe Gatti. But we have to go back to this file. We want to make him a scapegoat! If you send him to prison, you’re going to make him a thug…because he’s nice.”
After quickly deliberating, the court found Kamal Amakran guilty, and sentenced him to three years in prison, two of which were suspended. Four months of imprisonment having already been served in pre-trial detention, the remaining eight months were placed in the form of an electronic bracelet. The Ajaccian thus emerged from the Marseille judicial court free, his bag stuffed with clothes on his shoulder and certainly a little lighter.
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