At the Créteil court, immediate appearances have been linked since the beginning of the week. 15 young defendants accused of committing violence or participating in looting were tried on Tuesday.
The small courtroom of the Créteil court is crowded on Tuesday. On the benches crowd families, friends but also the curious, who have come to watch the trials of very young defendants. In total, 15 people are judged in immediate appearance. They must all answer for acts committed during the recent riots. Most of these defendants, unemployed or precarious workers, have no criminal record.
The immediate appearances are linked and for each case, the requisitions pronounced by the public prosecutor are heavy, the sentences pronounced after deliberation of the court, severe.
Riad, 19, enters timidly, head down, in the glass box of the courtroom. Small in size, Riad seems to have just come out of adolescence.
On the night of June 29 to 30, reports the president of the court, he was one of those, a dozen individuals, who attacked the Alfortville police station in Val-de-Marne. Armed with mortars or Molotov cocktails, they tried to set fire to the police station. Research and intervention brigade (BRI) teams were dispatched to the scene to regain control of the situation. The police ended up arresting four people, including Riad, using CCTV footage.
Asked by the president of the court about his participation in this group of rioters, Riad tries to explain: “I shouldn’t have, but I got carried away, I wasn’t trying to hurt a policeman.” Riyadh disputes: “I didn’t throw a Molotov cocktail!”
The young man speaks of his anger due to the circumstances of Nahel’s death, shot and killed following a police check in Nanterre. “So why didn’t you participate in the white march (last June 30) for Nahel”, asks the president. “I was not even aware of the march”, Riad replies.
In turn, the prosecutor underlines the seriousness of the facts and insists on the involvement of the young man among the rioters: “L‘group effect does not mitigate responsibility’. A sentence of 30 months imprisonment with warrant, in other words with immediate incarceration, is required against Riad. At the statement of the requisition, a murmur of surprise crosses the room, the young man collapses sobbing in the box and shouts to the president: “I’m still young and I’m not ready for that!”
In his defense, his lawyer invokes the immature nature of his client and denounces the sentence “extremely heavy” requested by the public prosecutor. The lawyer pleads instead for a mixed sentence: a probationary reprieve and the wearing of an electronic bracelet. The president quotes the words of his father who speaks of a “teenage crisis that continues in his son (..) of the bad Company” from Riad, unemployed, but who would like to work in the road sector.
Ryad was finally sentenced to 18 months in prison and a one-year suspended sentence.
View of the court of Créteil • © VINCENT ISORE / MAXPPP
“I do not remember anything !”
On the night of July 2 in Villejuif, in the Val-de-Marne, Mohamed, 21, went with three other people to the parking lot of a supermarket. Using an iron bar, he breaks into the commercial area by breaking a window and steals a case of whiskey from the store. An act of looting similar to dozens of others committed during the riots.
The president of the court reconsiders the conditions of his arrest. Mohamed is apprehended by law enforcement in civilian clothes and identified through CCTV footage.
“You seemed very drunk”, the president told him, citing a medical certificate attesting to his state of drunkenness that evening. “I was too drunk, I don’t remember anything at all!”, affirms the young man who does not dispute the facts.
Mohamed has lived in France for five years and is awaiting the renewal of his residence permit. He hopes to work, he says “in the building“. His lawyer points out “his problem with alcohol” and pleads for a probationary suspended sentence. The prosecutor gives his version. Mohamed took advantage of “the state of saturation” in which were the forces of order mobilized on the riots to commit a theft.
The prosecutor is asking for 18 months in prison with a committal order. Mohamed is finally condemned one year firm and five years of prohibition of territory on the city of Villejuif.
“An act of violence”
“I’m a good person, I have nothing to do here!“In the box, Rayan, a 19-year-old guy, tries, trembling, to explain himself:”I don’t know what came over me, I screwed up”.
The president of the court recalls the facts. Rayan was arrested during a crowd of rioters on June 30 at Kremlin-Bicêtre, in Val-de-Marne. Thirty individuals attacked a police station that night, firing mortars, Molotov cocktails or stones. When police reinforcements arrive on the scene, Rayan flees, but in his run, jostles and knocks down a police officer.
“Why were you there?“, asks the president of the court. “I was going out to get some fresh air, I go out almost every night, I saw groups of young people, but I was there as a spectator”, Rayan justifies himself.
While arresting him, the police got their hands on his mobile phone which contained a video of the riot. “JI didn’t intend to distribute it to everyone, but only to friends”, Ryan defends himself.
In fact, the young man did not broadcast a video, nor launched mortars, specifies the prosecutor but in his race, “he knocked down a policeman … an act of violence on a police officer”, argues the prosecutor who requires 30 months of imprisonment against the young man. He will be sentenced for some of the facts to a 10-month suspended sentence.
A court room in Créteil • © NICOLAS KOVARIK / MAXPPP
A “rapid, firm and systematic” criminal response
Eric Dupond-Moretti, the Minister of Justice was on Saturday visiting the court of Créteil to see the implementation of his circular addressed to the prosecutors. A text in which the Keeper of the Seals requests a criminal response “fast, firm and systematic” looting and violence.
This Tuesday, the Minister of Justice announced that 350 people had been imprisoned following urban violence. During the session of questions to the government, the Keeper of the Seals declared that: “Justice has been at the rendezvous of the firmness that I called for.
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