The verdict fell overnight from Saturday to Sunday.

Five young people were sentenced to terms ranging from 6 to 18 years in prison for the violent assault of police officers in Viry-Châtillon, in Essonne, in 2016. Eight other defendants were acquitted.

The reading of the verdict was interrupted by a fight in the box of the accused.

The Paris Assize Court on appeal sentenced on the night of Saturday to Sunday five young people to sentences ranging from 6 to 18 years of imprisonment for the violent assault of police officers in Viry-Châtillon, in Essonne, in 2016, and acquitted eight others, angering the victims' lawyers. The reading of the verdict was interrupted by a general fight in the box of the accused, which required the intervention of about thirty police and gendarmes. The clashes then spread in the courtroom, where the families of the accused were present. Calm returned after about ten minutes. 

"We have just witnessed a judicial shipwreck; while we know that there were 16 assailants, we end up with five convictions," denounced Me Thibault de Montbrial, lawyer for one of the victims, "collapsed ", according to him, by this verdict on appeal.

"It's a shipwreck because at the time of the verdict, the natural took over, a general fight broke out, the accused took to task", he added, explaining that he "never saw that in 25 years of the Assize Court ".

Eight of the accused acquitted

After 14 hours of deliberation and six weeks of closed hearing, the five convicts were found guilty of attempted murder on persons holding public authority.

Three of them were sentenced to 18 years in prison, one to 8 years in prison, and the last to 6 years.

They faced life imprisonment.

The other eight defendants were acquitted.

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Unlike the civil parties, one of the defense lawyers, Me Mauger-Poliak, hailed "a relief for the defense", and a "total denial of the investigation". "It is the end of the legal nightmare for my client", who had already been acquitted at first instance, for his part declared Me Arnaud Simonard. At first instance, eight of these young people were found guilty and sentenced to terms ranging from 10 to 20 years in prison. Five others had been acquitted.

The Paris general prosecutor's office had appealed against the verdict while the lawyers for the civil parties had denounced sentences "which did not draw conclusions" from the "gravity of the crime" committed.

The court did not follow the requisitions of the attorney general who had asked this Tuesday for an acquittal and sentences of 12 to 25 years of criminal imprisonment for the 12 other defendants, now aged 21 to 26 years.

"These policemen, we spit in their faces"

The 13 young people, aged 16 to 21 at the time of the facts, were accused of having been part of the twenty hooded people who, on October 8, 2016, stormed in the middle of the day two police cars parked nearby from the Grande Borne district, a vast social housing city considered to be one of the most sensitive in Île-de-France. Within seconds, they had smashed the windows and thrown Molotov cocktails into the cockpits. 

In a first car, a 28-year-old security assistant and a 39-year-old female peacekeeper caught fire.

The deputy's life-threatening prognosis had been engaged for a while and he had been in a coma for several weeks.

More than four years after the incident, he still bears the marks of the assault on his face.

"These police officers who were in the cars, we spit in their faces after having burned them for the first time," denounced this Sunday at the end of the hearing Me Laurent Franck Lienard, lawyer for two of the police officers.

"I have children, help me"

Her colleague had been hit by stones when she got out of the torch-turned car, while her upper body was on fire. "I have children, help me", had heard him say one of his alleged attackers, who later confided to a friend that it had made him "a pang in the heart". Two officers managed to extricate themselves from the other car when a Molotov cocktail fell in the back seat. They had been injured more lightly. 

According to the investigation, the defendants, members of a band from the Grande Borne, had planned a few days earlier to "fuck the cops". Just after the statement of the verdict, the city of Grande Borne, which has thousands of homes, was "deserted" in the night from Saturday to Sunday according to a police source from Essonne.