It was a long-awaited judgment, more than five years after this eventful demonstration of the “yellow vests” in Nice.
The divisional commissioner who, in 2019, ordered a charge during which a septuagenarian activist, Geneviève Legay, was injured during a Yellow Vest demonstration, was sentenced this Friday to a six-month suspended sentence.
This is exactly what was requested against him.
“This order was given in a manner that was neither necessary, nor proportional, nor in accordance with the regulations,” said prosecutor Alain Grellet on the second day of Rabah Souchi’s trial before the Lyon Criminal Court.
The debates highlighted a charge launched very quickly after the usual warnings, leaving no time for the demonstrators to disperse, nor for the responding police officers to prepare properly.
Images that have caused a lot of ink to flow
On March 23, 2019 in Nice, Geneviève Legay, then 73-year-old departmental spokesperson for Attac, took part in a banned Yellow Vest demonstration.
Knocked down in the police charge, she suffered multiple fractures and head trauma.
Called to the witness box, she returned Friday with emotion to this day which left her “really diminished”.
At the time, the images of the lifeless septuagenarian on the ground caused a lot of ink to flow, especially since the authorities were suspected of having sought to cover up the affair, the Nice prosecutor having initially denied any contact between the activist and the police, a thesis taken up at the Élysée by Emmanuel Macron.
Nearly five years later, Rabah Souchi, 54, was judged, as “tactical leader” of the security system, for “complicity in violence by a person holding public authority”, a rare situation.
The police officer who knocked down Geneviève Legay was not prosecuted, after being placed under the status of assisted witness during the investigation.
The investigating judges considered that only the commissioner bore criminal responsibility for a charge which was “neither necessary nor proportionate with regard to the aim to be achieved: dispersing a calm crowd made up of demonstrators, some of them elderly, journalists and simple onlookers.”
At the beginning of February, Rabah Souchi, 54, was appointed deputy director of the Nice municipal police.
He is therefore now seconded from the national police.