Seven young people who had participated in a paving in 2017 against the police in Mayotte, severely wounding the second in command of the local gendarmerie in the face, were sentenced on Monday to terms of up to 12 years in prison.
Read also: Mayotte: opening of the trial to the assizes of 7 minors who injured a gendarme in 2017
In the case, which involved eight people, aged 15 to 22 - one of whom, aged 13 at the time of the crime, was referred to juvenile court, and another was unfit to appear - , the juvenile assize court retained the most severe sentences for the two main defendants. The alleged ringleader, of Comorian nationality, was sentenced to 12 years of criminal imprisonment and a definitive ban from French territory, his accomplice to 10 years of imprisonment. The other five are sentenced to terms ranging from four months to one year in prison.
"It seems fair and consistent to me, especially this ban from French territory for the main accused, who attacks the police, and therefore the symbol of France,"
Lieutenant-Colonel told AFP. Olivier Pech, victim of a stone throw during the night of May 13 to 14, 2017, which at the time earned him to be evacuated to Reunion with a head trauma, his face
"shattered"
. The member lost half of the visual acuity in his right eye.
"My clients are satisfied with the decisions, that justice has passed and has taken the measure of the extreme gravity of the acts committed by the two main actors in this case"
, for his part declared to AFP Me Pauline Ragot, l lawyer for Lieutenant-Colonel Pech.
Violence against the police is frequent in this insecure French department in the Indian Ocean. In 2018, a police officer from the Mayotte anti-crime brigade lost the use of one eye after being injured by a projectile throw.