A police officer severely beaten in Belfort: an investigation into attempted homicide opened, two arrests

Images of “rare violence”. In Belfort, on Friday, a police officer was severely beaten, some to the head, on the sidelines of the “high school blockades”. An investigation into “attempted intentional homicide against a person holding public authority” was opened by the Belfort prosecutor.

“Everything will be done to identify the perpetrators of this despicable act,” assured Laurent Nunez, Minister of the Interior the same day. The official lost consciousness and had to be hospitalized. It is now in a state which “fortunately no longer gives rise to any major concern,” said the minister.

Two people were arrested and placed in police custody, announced the prosecutor, Paul-Edouard Lallois, this Sunday. He will hold a press conference at 4:00 p.m. to provide an update on the investigation. The magistrate yesterday gave several details both about the police officer and the circumstances of his beating by masked and hooded individuals. The police officer was born in 1967 and is head of the departmental territorial intelligence service of the Territoire de Belfort.

No “police violence”

“We have several people now identified as likely to be among the main perpetrators” of the attack on the police commander, he said, saying he was “fairly optimistic” about the prospect of arresting them within 24 hours. A 17-year-old young man arrested Friday in connection with the attack was released from police custody on Saturday noon without charges brought against him, with no evidence showing that he had hit the police officer.

“He was nevertheless on site and his statements allow us to better understand the context” of the facts, said the prosecutor. Among the suspects identified was a young man whom the police commander had handcuffed on the banks of a stream shortly before the attack, the prosecutor said. Recognizable by his “handcuff on the wrist”, he is “clearly identified as coming to deliver two violent kicks to the police officer’s head”, continues the magistrate.

Several videos, published on social networks, showed the moment preceding the violent attack on the police officer. We saw him struggling with a young man in the middle of a stream, before managing to immobilize him on the bank. Some voices were raised to denounce “police violence”. An assertion rejected by the prosecutor on Saturday: “It is the individual who deliberately goes into the water” while trying to escape the agent who was pursuing him for his involvement in throwing projectiles and starting fire.

“Both fall into the stream, that’s why you have, at one point, a scene with the commander kneeling in the water and the individual sprawled on the water,” he explains. But the young person “cannot be immersed in water, there is not enough water to be immersed,” according to the prosecutor.