Vincent Jeanbrun, mayor of the city of L’Ail-le-Rose in the Val-de-Marne department, said on Twitter (blocked in the Russian Federation) that a car entered his house at night. “My wife and children are shocked and injured,” the mayor said in a message posted at 2 am (3 Moscow time). According to people close to Jeanbrun, he was in the town hall, entangled in barbed wire after numerous attempts to attack the building, reports Le Figaro.
Meanwhile, a group of hostile people had gathered in front of the house where the mayor’s wife and two small children were. The rioters rammed the car into the garden gate and then set it on fire “with the express intent of burning down the building”. Jeanbrun’s wife managed to escape with two children and was injured as rioters gave chase. The woman was hospitalized, the children are with her father.
French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin, in a message posted at 03:00 this Sunday, said that the riots that continued tonight in various cities across the country have decreased in intensity compared to the events of recent days. “A quieter night thanks to decisive police action,” he wrote.
On Saturday night, 45,000 officers were sent to the main cities and to Paris. The rebels attacked cars located near the Champs Elysees. The path to elite boutiques and restaurants was blocked by special forces, including those on motorcycles. In the Brittany city of Rennes, there were clashes with law enforcement officers near the Kennedy metro station. The rioters fired firecrackers at the police.
Prime Minister Elisabeth Bourne visited the command center overnight, where Gerald Darmanin and Paris Police Chief Laurent Nunez were present, and praised the readiness of the police to contain urban violence. “I have come to reaffirm my full support for them and my government,” she said. The whereabouts of President Macron are unknown.
Recall that protests in France began on Tuesday after 17-year-old Algerian teenager Nael Merzouk was shot dead by police in the Paris suburb of Nanterre. The young man was shot in the chest at point-blank range when he was trying to get away from two policemen who stopped him to search him. Nael did not have a driver’s license due to his age.
The young man was reportedly running at high speed along the bus lane, stopping only when police on motorcycles approached the car he and a friend rented with Polish numbers. Police initially said one of the officers opened fire because Merzouk’s driving style made him fear for his own safety and the safety of others, but after video of the shooting surfaced online, that account was challenged, it reports. The Guardian.
The officer has now been charged with premeditated murder and the incident has led to accusations of racism within the French police. The protests in Paris turned into riots and spread across the country in a week. At the moment, at least 2.5 thousand people have been arrested, more than 200 police officers were injured.
This level of violence has not been seen in France since 2005, when the deaths of two teenagers fleeing from the police forced people onto the streets and led the government to declare a state of emergency. But now the country’s authorities are not going to present it yet. On Friday, a spokesman for the Elysee Palace said a state of emergency was “not necessary” and that a “gradual response” to the violence seen in recent days is “more appropriate.”
Meanwhile
According to the 20min.ch website, the scenes of violence and looting on Sunday night took place in Switzerland. Inspired by the French riots, people rallied in Flon, a neighborhood in the center of Lausanne, on Saturday night, calling for “a burning fire to spread across the border.” The rioters attacked one of the stores, breaking down the door and attacking the police, who were defending the building. Witnesses reported about 200 radicals clashing with a handful of police on motorcycles wearing helmets. Other locations were also reported to have been attacked.
