A police commander was filmed in January, hitting a man on the sidelines of a demonstration of "yellow vests" in Toulon: six months later, a criminal investigation was opened, said Friday the floor of Toulon. "I seized an investigating judge for intentional violence by a person in charge of public authority," Bernard Marchal, a public prosecutor in Toulon, told AFP, confirming information from the newspaper Libération .
A late investigation
This seizure "against X" is aimed at violence committed on January 5 by the police commander Didier Andrieux, acting head of the local police forces, filmed by "yellow vests" in the process of the muscular arrest of a man . The images, showing him blows in the face while the individual seemed controlled by his police colleagues, had provoked controversy on social networks.
At first, the prosecutor's office of Toulon had opened a judicial investigation against three "yellow vests", including the man visible in the video - who was not wearing a yellow vest, for "outrages and voluntary violence against people depositaries of public authority ". The man arrested by Commander Andrieux was notably suspected of carrying a bottle shard in his hand. The parquet floor of Toulon, which had not found it useful at first to investigate the conditions of the interpellation, had changed 24 hours later, after a decision of the prefecture to engage an investigation administrative. Bernard Marchal then entrusted a judicial investigation to the General Inspectorate of the National Police (IGPN).
Blows "neither proportionate nor necessary"
It is on the basis of the report submitted at the end of June by the IGPN that Bernard Marchal decided this week to open a judicial information. According to Libération , the "font police" indicates in its report that the man was not carrying a dangerous object and that the blows to the face by the police officer were "neither proportionate nor necessary".
However, according to a source close to the file questioned by AFP, the judicial investigation shows that the man "had a bottle shard in his hand". This investigation also states that the first blows carried out by Commander Andrieux are legitimate, but that there are "two blows" (the last two) "for which the IGPN has not been able to establish certain legitimacy", which does not necessarily mean that there is fault, according to this source. The prosecutor's office in Toulon specifies that one and the same investigating judge is seized of the two parts of the case, the alleged police violence on one side and the outrages and alleged violence of the demonstrators on the other.