A police car (illustration). – DENIS CHARLET / AFP
The man who had wiped racist comments from police who arrested him in L’Ile-Saint-Denis (Seine-Saint-Denis) at the end of April, claims to have been subjected to violence by them and filed a complaint on Saturday, according to his lawyer and the Bobigny prosecution.
In his complaint, Samir, 28, a construction worker of Egyptian nationality, currently unemployed, denounces “intentional violence having resulted in an ITT not determined to date, in a meeting, with use or threat of a weapon, by persons holding public authority ”
and racist. This resident of Seine-Saint-Denis, without papers and who has lived for more than 10 years in France, also files a complaint for “violation of individual liberty” and “destruction of private property”, his mobile phone having been destroyed by a police officer.
Violence and laughter
That night, Samir would have thrown himself in the Seine by “fear of police violence”, indicates his lawyer Arié Alimi. Being in “administrative irregularity” on French territory, his client was also in the vehicle of a friend driving while intoxicated, he told AFP. The judicial authorities had indicated that the police were pursuing two men suspected of theft on a construction site in Asnières-sur-Seine (Hauts-de-Seine), a municipality bordering L’Ile-Saint-Denis. But the investigation was closed without further action.
Handcuffed as soon as he arrived on the opposite bank of the river, the young man would have received “many kicks, fists and batons from (…) seven or eight” officials, incriminating “first” the divisional commissioner of ‘Asnières, an officer already convicted of “non-prevention of crime” in another case of police violence. The beatings continue as Samir is driven in a van, under the insults of the police, then in the van himself, from three male police officers and a woman who allegedly “crushed (his) head on the ground with his foot ”,“ intimating (…) to apologize ”, according to the details of the complaint.
A video recording
A video, taken by residents and published on social networks, allows us to hear the racist remarks of the police officers – two of whom have since been suspended – then cries of pain, presented as those of the arrested, accompanied by laughter seeming to emanate officials. “The comment, made by one of the police officers,” he is going to have a bad time “, audible in this video, confirms in all points the violence,” said Alimi.
Arrested shortly before 2 a.m., the young man was finally released around 5:20 p.m., without having been assisted by a lawyer, without an interpreter when “he practically does not speak French” and “outside of all legal framework”, according to the lawyer. This is denied by the Nanterre prosecution, which instructed the police to investigate the racist comments made by the police. “He was in police custody for breaking and entering in a place intended for the warehouse of goods,” he told AFP on Saturday.
The theft investigation closed the same day, the prefectural authorities “made a decision by OQTF” (obligation to leave French territory), it was said from the same source.
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