Paris (EFE)
“A night of intolerable violence against the symbols of the Republic: town halls, schools and police stations set on fire or attacked. 150 people arrested”, the French Minister of the Interior wrote briefly on his Twitter account this morning.
Gérald Darmanin also called for “support for the policemen, gendarmes and firefighters who bravely faced the attack” and complained about those who are instigating the attacks: “Shame on those who did not call for calm”, he added.
An “inexplicable and inexcusable” death
The death of the young Naël by the shots of a police officer who claimed to have used his weapon in self-defense, despite the fact that a video of the event denied his version, had already generated riots the night before in which some thirty detainees were registered, more than 40 vehicles were set on fire and 24 police officers were injured.
On Wednesday, after the first night of violent incidents, concentrated mainly in Nanterre and other cities on the outskirts of Paris, French President Emmanuel Macron and several members of his cabinet called for calm and expressed their solidarity with the family of the Naël, stressing that his death is “inexplicable and inexcusable”.
Naël, a young black man who on Tuesday morning was driving a rented yellow Mercedes sports car without permission through the streets of Nanterre, was stopped by a couple of police motorcyclists, one of whom, according to a video recorded by a witness shoots him point-blank through the driver’s window when the young man starts the vehicle to flee, although he did not threaten the integrity of either of the two agents.