The Douai general prosecutor's office announced on Friday that it would appeal the acquittal of the GIGN gendarme acquitted Thursday by the criminal court of Pas-de-Calais, where he was on trial for a fatal shooting in 2018 of a 22-year-old young man during a 'one of arrest.
“This appeal will be examined by the Assize Court of the North, the appeal body of the departmental criminal court
,” he said in a press release.
“The hearing date will be specified later.”
“Justice is beautiful!”
, cried relatives of the victim, Henri Lenfant, a member of the Traveler community, after the verdict on Thursday.
The anger turned into a spontaneous demonstration outside the court, with tears, screams, insults, threats.
Adults and children had participated in minor damage, overturning trash cans and breaking objects belonging to traders.
The attorney general had requested two years of imprisonment for the gendarme, rejecting the notion of
“self-defense”
.
Alexandre B., then group leader of a unit at the GIGN in Reims, was on trial for
“violence by a person holding public authority leading to death without intention of causing it”
, acts punishable by 20 years of imprisonment. prison.
Alexandre B. assures that he did not want to “kill the person”
The facts date back to the evening of September 28, 2018 in Fouquières-lès-Lens, when his squad, called as reinforcements by the Arras gendarmerie as part of an investigation into burglaries, tried to arrest three people in a car, members of the Traveler community.
The passengers managed to escape, but the driver, Henri Lenfant, remained at the wheel, engine off, unarmed.
The police try to extricate him from the vehicle, but he refuses to come out.
On the passenger side, door open, Alexandre B. pulls the handbrake, kneeling on the passenger seat and tries, in vain, to remove the keys from the ignition.
Henri Lenfant restarts the car and accelerates.
Alexandre B., still kneeling on the passenger seat, ends of his legs in the air, insists on remaining in the vehicle.
Feeling in danger, he draws his gun and shoots, hitting the young man in the neck.
“My wish was not to kill the person, but to save my life
,” he declared Monday.