Two high school students indicted for aggravated violence after the attack on a police officer in Belfort

Two high school students aged 15 and 17 were indicted for aggravated violence after the beating of a police officer on Friday in Belfort during clashes on the sidelines of the high school movement, the prosecution announced this Sunday, October 4. The investigation was initially opened for attempted murder. But in the absence of “probative evidence” of an intention to kill, the two teenagers were finally indicted for aggravated violence, the prosecutor, Paul-Édouard Lallois, told the press on Sunday.

The older man, whom the police officer had previously tried to arrest, also filed a complaint for attempted murder, according to his lawyer Arié Alimi, who accused the police officer of having tried to drown the young man during this attempted arrest near a stream.

The two accused attend school at the Courbet high school in Belfort, near which the events took place when around 200 young people were gathered as part of the high school mobilization, around fifty of whom engaged in violence, according to the prosecutor. One, in first grade, is 15 years old, and the other, of Bulgarian nationality, will be 18 years old at the end of the month, said the prosecutor, stressing that they have no criminal record. Sunday evening, the oldest was placed in pre-trial detention. The other was placed under judicial supervision with a ban on demonstrating.

The 17-year-old “expressed significant regrets”

The police officer, head of departmental intelligence, was knocked to the ground after trying to arrest the latter, whom he had spotted as being one of the thugs participating in the throwing of projectiles and trash fires in parallel with the high school mobilization.

Videos showing the attack, which occurred Friday morning near the high school, circulated on social networks. They show the police officer in plain clothes, thrown to the ground by a person dressed in black, who punches him several times in the face. At least two other people kick him. The 17-year-old suspect admitted to having delivered “two kicks to the head” and he “expressed significant regrets”, according to Paul-Édouard Lallois.

The attack led Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez to denounce “unbearable” and “rarely violent” images, in a context of hardening of the movement to block high schools. Seven months before the presidential election, in an electric social and political climate, this mobilization to demand more resources is more than sensitive.

“Procedural irregularities”

The attempt to arrest the high school student by the fifty-year-old police officer is controversial. Videos showing the scene are posted online, accompanied by comments accusing the officer of putting the young man's head under water while trying to subdue him. The images, taken from afar and in which the protagonists are partially hidden by vegetation, do not allow us to say with certainty whether the young man's head is submerged or not. We then see the young man and the policeman come out of the stream. It is at this moment that the agent immobilizes him in order to handcuff him.

The prosecutor insisted on Sunday that there was no indication that the young man's head was submerged in the stream, which was a maximum of 19 centimeters deep.

According to the prosecutor, when investigators asked the suspect in custody “if he thought the police officer had tried to drown him, he responded in the negative.” Facts denied by Me Alimi, who accused the prosecutor of lying and denounced “procedural irregularities” on BFMTV, asking for a change of scenery for the investigation.

The magistrate had previously explained that the police officer and the protester had “fell into the stream, which is why you have, at one point, a scene with the commander kneeling in the water and the individual sprawled on the water”. This young man, handcuffed on one hand, then escaped before being arrested again on Friday.