The Defender of Rights "seized" of office to investigate the disappearance of a young man in Nantes during the Music Festival, during which a controversial police operation was conducted, said Wednesday his services, confirming Loopsider information.
Steve Maia Caniço, 24, has not given any sign of life since the night of 21 to 22 June, where a techno party he attended on a quay on the island of Nantes, on the banks of the Loire, was finished in confusion. Around 04H30, clashes broke out between participants and police officers, came to demand the stop of the music. Some participants claim to have been blinded in a cloud of tear gas while many revelers were drunk. A panic followed and several partygoers fell in the river. Fourteen people had been rescued in the Loire by the help of the night.
IGPN has been seized
The public prosecutor's office of Nantes opened a judicial inquiry into the disappearance of the young man, and the General Inspectorate of the National Police (IGPN) was also seized to investigate the conditions of the police intervention. "If the Defender of Rights decided to self-seize even before he receives a report or a request for investigation from the plaintiffs, it is because this operation shocked," said Marianne Rostan, lawyer who filed last week a collective complaint from 85 people "for endangering the lives of others and voluntary violence by persons holding public authority."
"It is not only the people who were on the spot who denounce the conditions of this intervention.There are associations, deputies, public authorities, even police unions, who rise to denounce the conditions under which this intervention took place, "she said.