Two new complaints for "forgery" and "violence" were lodged with the Evry prosecutor's office against the police officers responsible for the investigation of the attack on burnt police officers in Viry-Châtillon (Essonne) in 2016, said Sunday to the 'AFP the prosecutor of Evry.
To read also: Attack of Viry-Châtillon: the controversy swells after the verdict
In a joint complaint filed Wednesday and consulted by AFP, Me Sarah Mauger-Poliak, Me Yaël Scemama and Michel Stansal denounce
"forgery in public writing"
and
"willful violence by a person holding public authority"
in the context of of the investigation conducted by the Departmental Security of Essonne, confirming information from Mediapart.
Denouncing the investigators by name, the lawyers believe that the interrogations were transcribed to the detriment of the defendants, and that the
"culprits would have knowingly been released"
. According to them, the police officers wrote the minutes
"by modifying the meaning of the statements, by evading the protests of innocence, a large number of detailed explanations and without recording the requests for verification of the elements proving the absence of involvement"
of their two clients, acquitted on appeal, one of whom was sentenced to 18 years at first instance.
In addition, according to the complaint, the key witness of the investigation did not
"spontaneously"
produced a
"list of participants in the attack"
as assured by the investigators.
According to the Evry prosecutor's office, another complaint for
"forgery in public writing"
was also filed by Me Frank Berton, lawyer for one of the young people sentenced to 18 years' imprisonment on appeal, and who appealed to the Supreme Court. .
"Just as I decided on a change of scenery for the first two complaints on the investigation, I requested a change of scenery for these two new complaints,"
the prosecutor of Evry told AFP.
As with the first two complaints, this request for relinquishment must be studied by the Paris general prosecutor's office.
Frédérick Petipermon, lawyer for one of the defendants sentenced to 18 years in prison on appeal and who also appealed to the Supreme Court, had already lodged two complaints in Evry, on February 26 and March 10, for
"forgery in public writing
" . According to one of these complaints, consulted by AFP, the minutes were truncated, not transcribing the words of two key witnesses of the investigation.
On April 18, after a six-week closed-door appeal trial, the Paris juvenile assize court declared five of the 13 defendants guilty of attempted murder of police officers. Three of them, sentenced to 18 years' imprisonment, appealed to the Supreme Court. Eight were acquitted, some for the benefit of the "doubt" or sometimes for "lack of evidence", arousing the indignation of the police unions and part of the political class.
These criticisms prompted the Director General of the National Police Frédéric Veaux to react, who defended the investigators he visited. He was also surprised that these criticisms of the investigation came five years after the fact. "
It was during the trial at first instance that we discovered the gap between the statements of the accused and their transcription by the investigators,"
Mauger-Poliak told AFP in April.
