Police shooter who killed teen in France says never issued threat

VERSAILLES, France — A French policeman who sparked riots last week after killing a teenager has denied threatening to shoot the boy in the head before opening fire, legal documents seen by AFP showed on Thursday.

The 38-year-old officer, named as Florian M., told the IGPN internal police investigation service he did not say the words "you're going to get a bullet in the head", according to a transcript seen by AFP

The apparent threat was a key feature of a bystander's video of the shooting that contradicted the initial police account and sparked successive nights of rioting in which cars and public buildings were burnt, businesses looted and youths clashed with police.

Investigators believe they were uttered by a second officer at the scene, with digital checks on the video ongoing.

Florian M., a motorbike traffic officer, said he had pulled the trigger because he was afraid the driver of the car, 17-year-old Nahel, would drive off and "drag" his colleague with him.

The policeman, who has been charged with voluntary manslaughter, had his detention extended early Thursday by an appeals court in Versailles outside Paris.

Fallout from the June 27 shooting of Nahel continued to top news bulletins, with the collection for the police officer organised by far-right personality Jean Messiha reaching 1.6 million euros ($1.7 million) before he closed it on Wednesday.

Nahel's family have filed a criminal complaint for "fraud by a group, misuse of personal data and conspiracy in these crimes against Jean Messiha and everyone ... taking part in these offences", said Yassine Bouzrou, a lawyer for Nahel's mother.

'Bullet in the head' 

French President Emmanuel Macron has promised that his government will formulate a response to the riots in the country's deprived, multi-ethnic suburbs once events have been properly analysed.

"We will keep working" on answers, he said on a visit to southwestern city Pau, adding that "the first response is order, calm and harmony".

Just 20 people were arrested overnight from Wednesday to Thursday, the interior ministry said, reinforcing perceptions of life returning closer to normal.

The IGPN and its equivalent for the gendarmerie are investigating 10 alleged incidents of improper behaviour by officers during the violence which saw 45,000 officers deployed each night to restore order, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said.

One relates to a man struck in the head by a less-lethal “beanbag” munition believed to have been fired by police in eastern France as he drove to a petrol station on June 30. He is now in a coma.

A second focuses on the death in Mediterranean port city Marseille on Saturday of a 27-year-old delivery driver called Mohammed who may have been hit by a police rubber bullet known as a “flash-ball” as he rode his scooter.

His pregnant widow told reporters that he had been filming the riots at the time.

“Even the prosecutor told me he was not with the rioters,” she said, according to the Parisien newspaper.

A march has been called for him at 6pm on Thursday.

‘Deadly showdown’ 

The violence has propelled issues of unequal justice and policing, immigration and integration back to the top of the agenda in France after months of battle over Macron’s detested pension reform.

With the loss of manufacturing industries that once employed suburban populations, “France’s socioeconomic dynamics have created a ‘clientele’ for the police, mostly from former colonial populations, locked up with them in a deadly showdown with no way out,” police researcher Fabien Jobard told daily Le Monde.

But after days largely below the radar, Marine Le Pen, leader of the far right National Rally and Macron’s two-time challenger for the presidency, told broadcaster France 2 that “poverty is not at the origin of these riots”.

Instead, the “problem of immigration” had “created in many people’s minds a kind of secession from French society”, she added.

Meanwhile, the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) Party has joined calls for “citizen marches” on Saturday against “discriminatory” police tactics and social policies.

The party was heckled for days by Macron’s centrists, conservatives and the far-right for failing to condemn rioting as soon as it began.

“None of us called for insurrection or setting fires,” LFI’s de-facto leader Jean-Luc Melenchon told investigative outfit Mediapart Wednesday, adding that “no-one is happy when cars are burning”.

Nevertheless, left-wingers should “never distance ourselves from the communities we represent, even when there are contradictions”. he added.