Tension is mounting in Dijon. For the fourth consecutive evening, in a city little used to this kind of disturbance, dozens of hooded people gathered Monday, June 15, in the sensitive district of Grésilles. Armed with iron bars and handguns, some fired into the air, destroyed video surveillance cameras and burned trash cans and vehicles, police sources told AFP.
Around 8:30 p.m., 60 mobile gendarmes, around forty CRS and reinforcements from the anti-crime brigade (BAC), as well as from the Raid, intervened to put an end to the violence. "A hundred opponents" were then faced with the police, said the prefect of Côte-d'Or, Bernard Schmeltz.
Carcasses of garbage cans and burnt out cars
The intervention ended at around 10 p.m., leaving only a few charred carcasses of trash cans and vehicles in the neighborhood, which has returned to calm, an AFP journalist noted. Four people were arrested, according to the prefecture.
A team of journalists from France 3 "was taken to task and his vehicle stoned" and a driver was "attacked and his vehicle thrown against a burning barricade", according to the prefecture.
According to Prefect Schmeltz, the accused did not belong to the Chechen community, unlike the last three days where several dozen or even hundreds of them had gathered in the city center of Dijon, then in Grésilles, to conduct targeted attacks as part of an apparent settlement of accounts.
"We have not identified any external presence, they are people from Dijon," assured the prefect about the people gathered Monday evening.
Police sources said that the new violence was committed by people who wanted to defend their "territory" against repeated incursions by the Chechens.
"Unacceptable" troubles, for Christophe Castaner
In the evening, the Interior Minister, Christophe Castaner, deemed "inadmissible" the "violent disturbances to public order and acts of intimidation" of recent days, promising "a firm response".
Monday, a reinforcement of a squadron of mobile gendarmes, 110 soldiers, was dispatched on the spot, where the Secretary of State for the Interior, Laurent Nuñez, is expected Tuesday.
The prosecutor of Dijon, Eric Mathais, had indicated earlier Monday that "six wounded" had been recorded "in total in three successive episodes (Friday, Saturday and Sunday evening)" for no arrest. An investigation was opened, "in particular for attempted murder in an organized gang, degradations, incitement to violence", in co-operation between the judicial police and public security, according to him.
These new tensions follow "completely new" punitive expeditions carried out this weekend by members of the Chechen community. According to the police, a first raid was launched Friday evening in the city center following the assault, on June 10, of a young man of 16 years from this community.
Avenge a "16 year old" attacked by a dealer
In an interview with the local daily Le Bien Public, a man who presented himself as a Chechen who participated in the expedition confirmed that the operation was aimed at avenging a "16-year-old boy", a member of his community who was allegedly "attacked" by dealers.
About fifty Chechens, according to the police, returned on the night of Saturday to Sunday this time in the Grésilles district, and the manager of a pizzeria was seriously wounded by gunshots, the same source said.
A third expedition still mobilized, on the night of Sunday to Monday, 200 Chechens, also in Les Grésilles, according to a police source. On social networks, the video of a vehicle traveling at high speed and hitting a slope in front of a crowd of hooded men before turning around was widely relayed since Monday morning.
"Unacceptable chaos"
Political reactions followed one another on Monday evening. "Seeing what our leaders have allowed our beautiful country to do is heartbreaking," tweeted Marine Le Pen, while Jean-Luc Mélenchon denounced "unacceptable chaos". "The armed gangs must be dissolved. The disarmed gangs," tweeted the leader of the rebellious France.
Unacceptable chaos in #Dijon.
Armed gangs must be dissolved. Unarmed gangs.
With AFP and Reuters
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