More than a year after the riots in Nanterre, seven men acquitted

More than a year after the riots that broke out in Nanterre following the death of Nahel, killed by a police officer on June 27, 2023, seven men accused of participating in this urban violence were acquitted on Tuesday by the criminal court. “It’s consistent”said Florent Hauchecorne, lawyer for one of the defendants, according to whom this case “deflated along the way”.

These seven men, aged 19 to 37, were tried for participating in a group formed with the aim of committing violence or damage on the night of June 30 to July 1, 2023. They had all been arrested that night, around 2 a.m. The prosecution had requested a 10-month suspended prison sentence for six of them and an acquittal for the seventh. There were only five of them present at the Nanterre court on Tuesday.

According to the prosecution, their presence in the city in the middle of a night of violence, in possession of motorcycle hoods for one, T-shirts or surgical masks covering their faces for others, showed their willingness to participate in the riots. The court, however, considered “that there is insufficient evidence of [leur] willingness to participate in such a grouping”. Sometimes procedures “neither done nor to be done” and who “should have been closed without further action”deplored Me Hauchecorne.

Motorcycle balaclava

His 37-year-old client explained to the court that he had gone to Nanterre on a motorbike on the night of June 30 to July 1 to pick up a young man he was looking after. He was arrested while he was hiding in a bush to escape the rioters throwing projectiles, he told the court. When he was arrested, the police found a black balaclava on him, which was actually his motorbike balaclava, he said several times.

Another defendant, aged 19, explained to the court that he had cycled to Nanterre with his younger cousin to “go see” what was happening while he lived in Bougival (Yvelines), a few kilometers away. “They were in the wrong place at the wrong time and that does not constitute an offence of voluntary participation in a violent group.”argued the young man’s lawyer, Sarah Papoular.