After protests, France holds hasty lawsuits for hundreds

The clerks were on strike at the Nanterre courthouse, so the accused burglars, homeless thieves and domestic violence had to wait. It was 5pm when Yanis Linize was ushered into the courtroom a few blocks from the roundabout where young Nahel Merzouk was shot by a police officer a week ago. provoke protests through the whole country.

Mr. Linize was a bicycle courier from a southern suburb of Paris swept up in the anger and emotion who erupted over the death, and the widespread perception that racial discrimination had played a part in it.

He was charged with making death threats to police and promoting damage to public property.

“I was angry because of everything that is happening,” Mr. Linize, 20, told the panel of three black-clad judges in front of him. ‘Someone died. That’s serious.”

After five nights of anger over Mr. Merzouk’s murder, the country has calmed down and has started assessing the damage: more than 5,000 vehicles burned, 1,000 buildings damaged or looted, 250 police stations or gendarmes attacked, more than 700 officers injured.

About 3,400 people were arrested as a massive police effort sought to restore order.

The justice system is running almost around the clock to process them. Many are put through rushed processes known as comparisons immediatelywhere prosecutors and court-appointed lawyers traditionally go through simple crimes like traffic violations, theft or assault, often when the accused is caught red-handed.

After flooding the streets night after night with 45,000 agents, the French state wants to send a second hard message. Justice Minister Éric Dupond-Moretti advised prosecutors to systematically seek prison terms for those accused of physical assault or serious vandalism.

“Very clear, I want a firm hand,” Mr. Dupond-Moretti France told Inter radio on Monday.

The court in Nanterre, the Paris suburb where Mr Merzouk lived and died, held special sessions over the weekend. All kinds of people have appeared: paramedics, restaurant workers, factory workers, students, and the unemployed.

The majority of those arrested had no criminal record, according to French authorities. And most of them are minors: the average age is 17 years old, some as young as 12 years old. They go to a specialized court where the process is slower and imprisonment is seen as a last resort.

Of instant comparisons, justice is routinely as hard as it is fast: lawyers often have just 30 minutes to prepare and cases often end in jail. In theory, the defendants have the option of delaying the hearing to better prepare with court-appointed attorneys, but few take that option, mainly because they would have to wait in jail.

Sandwiched between robberies and domestic violence, lawsuits move quickly. Mr. Linize’s lasted less than two hours.

He appeared in a glass coffin, dressed in a blue waistcoat zipped up to his chin, his long brown hair falling neatly about his face, his hands folded politely behind his back.

The police arrested him for chanting ‘Justice for Nahel, we will kill you all’. He told the court he yelled, “Justice for Nahel, no more deaths.” Nearly three years ago, he was convicted of assaulting a police officer and had been working to pay off a €10,000 fine ever since. He lives with his parents.

After his arrest, police accessed his phone and found videos he had taken. The judge read out messages from the private Snapchat stories that Mr. Linize shared with 20 friends.

In one, he offers money to people who can give him mortar tubes to fire fireworks – the main weapons protesters used to fight the police. In a video he posted at 3:25 a.m., he holds a gas canister and says, “I’m going to burn everything in the housing project.”

But it’s all attitude, he insisted, saying he didn’t burn, destroy or steal anything. “All that, it’s just words,” he told the jurors. “I’m just saying what’s going through my head.”

President Emmanuel Macron has blamed social media — Snapchat and TikTok in particular — for accelerating the violent response to the teen’s shooting, enabling rioters to quickly coordinate and fueling copycat behavior. Experts say the effect is a marked difference from 2005, when France was rocked by three weeks of rioting following the deaths of two teenagers fleeing a police check. Smartphones and social media barely existed back then.

The chief judge read several messages that Mr. Linize shared and stated that he intended to “fight the police tonight” and damage everything.

“You wanted to frighten the state,” said the judge. “You said nothing came of the messages you sent, but you have no control over that.”

Court-appointed criminal defense attorney Mr. Linize, Camilla Quendolo, worked on cases all weekend. A common denominator she saw was the shock of the teen’s death among many protesters, some of whom even knew the victim.

“The message from the public prosecutor’s office was very clear, very precise and systematic. But on the bench it really depended on the judge,” said Ms Quendolo, who spends 30 percent of her time as a public defender.

“It’s a good thing and a bad thing,” she added. “They’re not robots, which is good, but at the same time it creates an inequality between people.”

In court, she reminded the judges that her client was carrying no dangerous items at the time of the arrest — “no gun, no fireworks, nothing.” His words were just political, she said.

Many in the small courtroom, filled with friends and families of those arrested, applauded.

“These punishments are too harsh for young people,” said Issa Sonke, 23, a security guard who was at the trial to support a friend. “They didn’t hurt anyone,” he said, standing by the coffee machine in the lobby of the courthouse.

Mr Sonke, who hails from a neighboring suburb full of immigrants, said “all of us grew up witnessing police brutality”, adding: “We’ve all seen the police beat our friends.”

Mr Merzouk’s murder has sparked the long-festering aversion to racism among many French minorities, and revived a long, painful debate about police racial profiling – a pernicious phenomenon that has been shown in many studies, but fiercely is rejected by the police unions.

2016, The French Supreme Court of Appeal ruled that some police identity checks were indeed discriminatory, motivated only by the “real or alleged ancestry” of the young men apprehended. It ruled that this was “serious misconduct” on the part of the state. While the government has made some changes, including the introduction of body cameras for some officers, it has not questioned the general practice of identity checks.

A group of organizations including Amnesty International archived a class action lawsuit against the government in 2021, calling, among other things, for a clearer legal basis for ID stops. The case is expected to start soon.

On Monday, the president’s office reiterated its position that discrimination or racism played no part in the traffic control that ended in Mr Merzouk’s death. Linda Kebbab, a spokeswoman for the country’s largest police union, representing the two officers involved, supported that view.

“If we say anything and everything is a racist crime, we won’t be able to fight real cognitive biases that are polluting the public service,” Ms Kebbab said.

A few blocks from the courthouse, a group of teenagers who knew Mr. Merzouk from the neighborhood sat on benches in the storefront of a small community organization, with the burnt-out carcasses of three cars in sight. They pointed out that it was unfair to be charged with threatening the police, when they regularly felt threatened by police identity checks.

“There are prisons and justice – prisons are for you, but justice is not,” says Yasmina Kammour, 25, a youth worker in the area.

Two warring online fundraising campaigns underline the point, she said. The one for the family of the police officer who shot Nahel has raised more than 1.4 million euros in just five days. The one for Mr. Mezrouk’s mother has reached €378,000.

“It proves so many things,” said Ms Kammour. “They have the money, they have the power.”

Ultimately, Mr. Linize was found guilty and given an eight-month suspended prison sentence. He was ordered to wear an electronic bracelet for four months, to take an integration course for € 300 and to remain employed.

The next person arrested during the protests arrived at the defendant’s glass coffin just after 10 p.m.

Aureline Breeden contributed reporting from Paris.