They had been acquitted in self-defense: two police officers were retried on appeal for violence during an intervention in 2013 in Seine-Saint-Denis, which had degenerated and at the end of which a mother had lost an eye.
The two officials, aged 39 and 41, declined their identities Thursday morning before the Paris Assize Court of Appeal, before the nine jurors, five men and four women, were drawn. Behind them sat the two men who were arrested by their crew in a city of Villemomble, on June 25, 2013.
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Around 8:30 p.m. that day, police from the Anti-Crime Brigade (BAC) were called in to find a man who was rodeo in motocross and had fled. The officials then arrested a young man of 20, confused with the fugitive, at the bottom of a building. Her 21-year-old brother tries to intervene and the situation becomes tense. Residents, alerted by the unrest, approach. Some young people throw projectiles, the police respond with tear gas.
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In the small crowd that forms is the mother of two young people arrested. While the residents are backing away, a policeman launches a dispersal grenade, a luster of which seriously injures the mother. She will lose the use of her left eye.
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At first instance, three police officers were prosecuted, including the one who launched the grenade, tried for "violence resulting in mutilation or permanent infirmity" , the criminal offense having led the case to the assizes. In July 2018, the Seine-Saint-Denis assize court acquitted them, finding that they had acted in self-defense.
The public prosecutor's office, which had requested their conviction, appealed but only for two police officers: the one who threw the grenade and another, accused of having injured one of the sons in the head. During the first trial, the two brothers were also tried for violence or rebellion, on the police. One of them had been acquitted, the other exempted from punishment. This time, they are therefore present only as a civil party but without their mother, who has since died.
The debates, initially scheduled until Friday March 13, must end on Wednesday March 11 or Thursday March 12.
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