France police shooting updates: March ends with tear gas, curfew

More than 40,000 police officers have been mobilised across France amid growing anger over the killing of 17-year-old Nahel M by a police officer.

Violent protests have spread to several different Paris suburbs and are expected to continue.

Read more here.

French authorities are ready for more violent night protests according to an internal security note, a police source has said.

The source referred to an internal document saying the “coming nights” were expected “to be the theatre of urban violence” with “actions targeted at the forces of order and the symbols of the state”, the source said.

Youths have clashed with police in Marseille on Thursday evening, the city’s main paper La Provence is reporting, as public anger over the police shooting of a 17-year-old near Paris earlier this week risked spreading across the country.

La Provence reported that police fired tear gas grenades and that Marseille’s tourist hot-spot of Le Vieux Port had been evacuated.

Inside the Paris suburbs, there is a long and troubled history with police incidents often triggering a violent reaction.

February 2017: A young Black man named Theo Luhaka was left permanently disabled after a violent police stop-and-search operation at a housing estate in Aulnay-sous-Bois, north of Paris.

July 2016: Another young Black man, Adama Traore, died in police custody after he resisted an ID check.

2005: Two teenagers from a high-rise estate were electrocuted when they hid from police at a power substation, leading to nationwide protests that went on for three weeks.

The killing of 17-year-old Nahel M at the hands of police is the third fatal shooting at a traffic stop this year, Al Jazeera’s Lauren Khan reports.

“There were a record 13 the year before. In May, the United Nations Human Rights Council accused France of increased police violence during pension reform protests,” she said. “And several criticised the nation at the UN council for religious intolerance, citing attacks against migrants, and racial profiling.”

Bus and rail services will be shutting down every evening from 9pm starting Thursday to safeguard transportation workers and passengers, the Paris region’s president said, a decision sure to affect untold thousands of travellers in the French capital and its suburbs.

“Our transports are not targets for thugs and vandals!” Valerie Pecresse, head of the Paris region tweeted.

This comes after two nights of urban unrest over the deadly shooting of 17-year-old Nahel M.

The local authority for the French town of Clamart, just to the south of Paris in the Ile-de-France region, has said it will impose a curfew from 21:00 until 06:00 local time (19:00-04:00 GMT) from this Thursday evening onwards through to July 3.

The curfew was aimed at restoring order after unrest erupted earlier this week over the deadly police shooting of a teenager of North African descent during a traffic stop in the Paris suburb of Nanterre, the authority said on Twitter.

A French policeman has been charged and remanded in custody before trial over the killing of a teenager at point-blank range which sparked nationwide protests, prosecutors have said.

The investigating magistrate has charged the policeman with voluntary homicide and placed him in provisional detention over Tuesday’s incident, the regional prosecutors said in a statement.

Activists say that punishing the one policeman who killed a teenager in a Paris suburb this week will not end police violence which has increased in the last few years.

“For 20 years, we have been saying the problem is not one or two cops who are problematic. It’s a problem of systemic violence inside the police. The police unions and the police in general – it’s a state within a state,” said Ian B, founder and spokesman for the anti-police violence collective known as “Let’s Disarm Them”.

“We cannot say that it’s one policeman responsible for this. We have had a huge increase [in violence] in several years, and especially under the Macron regime. We have a huge increase in police murders. We went from 20-25 murders every year and now, we are at 30-35 a year,” he told Al Jazeera from Lyon, France.

Police firing tear gas at marchers was shocking, and police handled the protest in the wrong way, marchers have told Al Jazeera’s Natacha Butler, reporting from Nanterre, a Paris suburb where a teenager was killed by police.

“It was shocking because there were families and young children, and people were here to be peaceful. Then we saw unrest and violence– some people were smashing up buildings. We saw fires being lit. There is debris because there were some clashes between some protesters and police,” she said.

“It didn’t have to be like that, say some people, because it was a peaceful march. It was a moment of commemoration. It shouldn’t have ended that way but people were so frustrated and furious, and that anger boiled over. Many are saying the police handled the end of that commemoration the wrong way. And that’s the sort of thing that happens over and again, they say.”

Neighbours marching for justice for Nahel M, who was shot dead by police in a Paris suburb, spoke of a young man who was “very kind – not evil or a hooligan” and should not have been shot over a traffic infraction.

“He is a young man, he is very kind, he is not evil or a hooligan. What the media are saying about him is not true. His mom raised him well. The young man left us for nothing,” said Mohamed Jakoubi, a neighbour of the victim’s family.

“We are not contradicting the state. We are not contradicting the legal or police procedure. Yes, he was driving a car without a licence, he tried to flee but he should not be killed.”

French police have fired tear gas at protesters marching outside Paris to remember a teen killed at point-blank range by an officer this week.

Some protesters began throwing projectiles at police outside the main local administration building in the Paris suburb of Nanterre, and security forces then dispersed the protest by firing tear gas.

Nanterre is where 17-year-old Nahel M was shot to death.

French President Emmanuel Macron has appealed for calm after unrest over the killing of a teenager by police in a Paris suburb.

“Clearly the emotion that comes with the death of a young man calls for contemplation and calm, and it’s what the government has constantly called for.

“I think this is what should continue to guide the next hours and the tributes. It’s been the subject of reactions, presumably attempts to change what’s happened, and the last hours have been marked by violent scenes at police stations but also schools and town halls.

“It’s absolutely unjustifiable.”

Large crowds join march in Nanterre, a Paris suburb, for Nahel M, a 17-year-old teenager killed by a French police officer during a traffic stop incident.

🔴 Foule très importante à #Nanterre pour la marche blanche en hommage à #Nahel. pic.twitter.com/1ZB8UH2ZkC

— Clément Lanot (@ClementLanot) June 29, 2023

French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin says police made 180 arrests during a second night of unrest as public anger spills onto the streets in towns and cities across the country.

The unrest in the French capital and other cities came two days after a 17-year-old was shot dead by a police officer in Nanterre, just outside Paris.

Darmanin was speaking from the suburbs of the northern French city of Lille, where the town hall was set on fire on Wednesday night.

At a march in Nanterre in memory of Nahel, participants have railed against what they perceived as a culture of police impunity and a failure to reform law enforcement in a country that has experienced waves of rioting and protests against police conduct.

“We demand that the judiciary does its job, otherwise we’ll do it our way,” a neighbour of Nahel’s family told Reuters at the march.

Thousands thronged the streets. Riding atop a flatbed truck, the teenager’s mother waved to the crowd wearing a white T-shirt reading “Justice for Nahel” with the date of his death below.

Tuesday’s lethal shooting was the third of its kind in France during 2023.

In 2022, a record 13 people were killed after not complying with a traffic stop according to a police spokesperson.

There were three such killings in 2021 and two in 2020, none in 2019, and six in both 2018 and 2017, according to a Reuters news agency tally, which shows most victims since 2017 were Black or of Arab origin.

France’s human rights ombudsman opened an inquiry into the death on Tuesday, the sixth such inquiry into similar incidents in 2022 and 2023.

More than a thousand people have begun a march in Nanterre as a way to pay tribute to Nahel M.

The teenager’s mother is among the crowd wearing a white T-shirt which reads, “Justice pour Nahel” (Justice for Nahel).

Nahel’s friends and family, as well as local and national government officials, are reported to be among those joining the peaceful march.

French newspaper Le Monde reported that mediators wearing red T-shirts are present and are instructing participants to remain calm.