In the midst of a debate on police violence, the decision should not fail to react. Justice has just dismissed the two police officers implicated in the investigation into Jean-François Martin, a student stunned by an LBD shot in Rennes in 2016. This geography student, then aged 20, had been injured during a demonstration on April 28, 2016 by a LBD 40 shot and had lost the use of his left eye, which had to be enucleated.
Two police officers had used their weapons at the time of the events and were placed under the status of assisted witness for "intentional violence resulting in infirmity or permanent mutilation by a person holding public authority".
Victim appealed
On May 29, the investigating judge concluded that there was no case, following the requisitions of the prosecution, said the public prosecutor of Rennes, specifying that the victim had appealed against this decision. According to the order consulted by AFP, the investigations entrusted to the IGPN did not make it possible “to identify with certainty the author of the shooting of LBD (…), it can only be pronounced as a dismissal "
"The use of force was rightly made with regard to the violence and major assaults that were committed by the demonstrators against the police in a time contemporary with the facts", specifies the prosecutor .
Human rights defender demanded prosecution
"I expected it, there is a form of weariness in the face of very slow justice", reacted Jean-François Martin. "We are deploying gigantic means to find a masked protester in the middle of 5,000 people but we are not able to find the policeman with a weapon," he said.
For his lawyer Arié Alimi, "this is a fairly classic defense on the part of a police officer to prevent identifying the perpetrator of the offense, in particular in the maintenance of order". "What is dramatic is that it was up to the police either to denounce themselves or to testify against each other, but obviously there is an omerta and it is regrettable that the investigating judge has lent the hand to the law of silence, "he added.
In January, human rights defender Jacques Toubon had called for disciplinary action against the two police officers "for disproportionate use of force". He pointed out that the police had not "given a precise account of the circumstances in which they used their weapon".
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- Police
- Reindeer
- Labor Law
- IGPN
- Student
- Police violence
- LBD
- Justice