French Officers Acquitted in Deaths That Incited 2005 Unrest
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Version 0 of 1. PARIS — A French court on Monday acquitted two police officers of charges that they had failed to prevent the electrocution of two teenagers in a suburb of Paris nearly 10 years ago, a tragedy that set off weeks of unrest and violent protests around the country. The court in Rennes found that the police officers, Sébastien Gaillemin, 41, and Stéphanie Klein, 38, were not guilty of failing to assist a person in danger, a punishable offense under French law for which they were each facing up to five years in prison and a fine of 75,000 euros, or about $85,000. The teenagers, Zyed Benna, 17, and Bouna Traoré, 15, were electrocuted after they hid in an electrical substation on Oct. 27, 2005, while running from the police in Clichy-sous-Bois, an impoverished suburb north of Paris. A third teenager survived with burns. Mehdi Bigaderne, a spokesman for Aclefeu, an association created in Clichy-sous-Bois after the 2005 riots to advocate on behalf of disenfranchised suburbs, said the decision to acquit was not unexpected, but still disheartening. “It is going to strengthen the feeling of injustice and of a two-tier legal system,” Mr. Bigaderne said. Police harassment is a common complaint in France’s poorer, heavily immigrant suburbs, and the deaths of the two teenagers in 2005 were met by a wave of violence that had roots in longstanding feelings of discrimination and lack of economic opportunities, similar to what contributed to the recent unrest in Ferguson, Mo., and Baltimore in the United States. But unlike those events, where decisions to charge or indict police officers were made soon after the original episodes, the Clichy-sous-Bois case lingered for nearly 10 years in the justice system — enough time to allow heightened tensions to recede. The final trial began in March, and, as is possible under French law, the public prosecutor had already asked the court to acquit the police officers. Soon after the teenagers died in 2005, hundreds of youths began burning cars and vandalizing bus stops in a wave of violence that spread to about 300 towns in suburban Paris and elsewhere in the country. “I don’t think we will see an outburst like there was in 2005,” Mr. Bigaderne said. “But what caused the explosion back then were too much injustice and too many social inequalities, and that situation hasn’t changed much.” In January, after three French gunmen of North African and sub-Saharan backgrounds killed 17 people in and around Paris, Prime Minister Manuel Valls referred to a “territorial, social, ethnic apartheid” in the French suburbs. Speaking to French reporters in Rennes after the ruling, Jean-Pierre Mignard, one of the lawyers for the families of the teenagers, said he did not want to see a “judicial apartheid” as well. While the families can no longer appeal the decision in the criminal justice system, Mr. Mignard said they would file a civil suit. On Oct. 27, 2005, a squad of police officers, including Mr. Gaillemin, arrived at a construction site in Livry-Gargan, a suburb near Clichy-sous-Bois, in response to a report that a group of young people was behaving suspiciously and possibly stealing construction materials. Ms. Klein was at the police station, coordinating radio communications. Mr. Benna and Mr. Traoré were walking back from a soccer game near the site when they heard the squad arrive, prompting them to run to avoid identity checks, the family contends. The two teenagers and a third friend, Muhittin Altun, jumped over a fence at a power station. In their ruling, the judges said that they had found no proof that Mr. Gaillemin and Ms. Klein knew that the teenagers were in danger and had failed to act, characterizing them instead as relatively inexperienced officers who had little knowledge of the power station’s surroundings and who did their best to locate the teenagers. The families of the victims and their lawyers pointed to a statement by Mr. Gaillemin — “If they enter the site, I wouldn’t give them much of a chance” — as proof that he knew the youths were at risk of electrocution, but the judges dismissed the claim, arguing that the officer was simply venturing a hypothesis and that his actions proved otherwise. Adel Benna, Mr. Benna’s brother, told the i-Télé television channel after the ruling that he felt “nauseated” and “disgusted.” “It’s a feeling of injustice,” Mr. Benna said. “With this decision, he died for nothing.” |