A video and two diametrically opposed versions. Is the arrest, on Friday, of a high school student in a watercourse in Belfort in accordance with the code of criminal procedure? The teenager, aged 17, filed a complaint of attempted murder against the police commander, accusing him of trying to drown him. A version firmly denied by the public prosecutor, Paul-Edouard Lallois. When investigators asked the suspect “if he thought the police officer had tried to drown him, he responded in the negative,” the magistrate said on Sunday evening. The images, partially obscured by vegetation, do not make it possible to establish with certainty whether the young man had his head submerged.
To understand the case, we must place this video in the chronology of events. Friday morning around 9:15 a.m., around 200 young people gathered near the Gustave Courbet high school in Belfort, as part of the protest movement in high schools. According to the prosecutor, around fifty engaged in violence. The presence on the ground of this experienced police commander, head of the departmental territorial intelligence service, is mainly explained by the hardening of the high school movement. Some damage – notably trash fires – had been noted in the previous days.
“He wanted to handcuff him to remove him from the scene”
“Normally, intelligence agents never intervene unless there is imminent danger, simply because from the moment you expose yourself, it’s over, you’re toast,” explains a police source. Their role in these movements is to take photos, provide links…” The officer, who was in civilian clothes, explained during his hearing that he made the decision to arrest the high school student after witnessing violence and noticing that his colleagues were busy. “He is above all a policeman; when he saw that this young man wanted to set fires, he decided to handcuff him to remove him from the scene,” insists Gaëlle James, general secretary of Synergies-Officiers, the union to which this 59-year-old commander belongs.
The Belfort public prosecutor specified to 20 Minutes that this agent had “formally” identified the teenager “as belonging to a group of thugs”. He initially followed him from a distance but “seeing that he was going to camouflage himself below a slope, near a stream called La Savoureuse, […] he went to meet him, notifying him of his status as a police officer. The individual then tried to flee. » A version that the teenager refutes in his complaint, revealed by BFM. The high school student said he was “seized by an individual” who he did not know was a police officer and “taken near a stream”. Contacted, his lawyer, Me Arié Alimi, did not respond.
Two opposing versions
According to the police officer, it was while trying to escape that the teenager fell into the water, dragging him down. “He then tried to handcuff him, placing him on the bank facing the ground,” assures the prosecutor, who also recalls that there was “at most” 19 cm of water. Me Arié Alimi, who accused the magistrate of lying, requested a change of scenery for the investigation.
Because his client's version is the opposite. “The individual held down Mr. R.’s head for a long time in order to end his life. Mr. R. struggled to free himself, without succeeding,” indicates the complaint. And to specify: “The author expressed his desire to kill him, to the extent that he held the head of the minor, who was struggling and no longer able to breathe underwater. » According to the lawyer, the police officer only released his grip because of the presence of witnesses on the scene. According to Me Arié Alimi, his client's denials are explained in particular by the fact that the young man, a Bulgarian national, had not understood the question.
A succession of videos
The images, which have gone viral on social networks, are in reality a succession of short sequences, filmed from a distance and of poor quality. In a first video, we see the teenager face down in the stream, the police officer kneeling on him, who is trying to handcuff him. Impossible to see if his face is in the water. In a second video, shot a few moments later, he is lying on his stomach, at the edge of the water, while the police officer is unable to handcuff him; he later explains that he had a problem with one of his handcuffs. On another video, we see the agent coming up from the stream with the teenager who does not seem to be in pain towards the plain where the scuffles are taking place. On several occasions, he tries to escape the vigilance of the police officer
Several police unions see in this complaint an attempt at political recovery of the movement and a desire to minimize the rest of the sequence. Because a few moments later, this same police officer was thrown to the ground and beaten by at least four individuals. In particular, we can see the teenager arrested with his handcuffs. In police custody, he admitted to having delivered “two kicks to the head” and he “expressed significant regret,” said the prosecutor. He was indicted, along with another 15-year-old teenager, for aggravated violence. “Throughout his time in police custody, this young person said that he was not the victim of an attempted drowning and when he left he filed a complaint, this is not credible,” laments Gaëlle James. For the moment, the prosecution has not opened an investigation into this aspect of the case.
