Europe 1 with AFP // Photo credit: Loïc Venance/AFP 6:20 p.m., February 22, 2024
Author of a fatal shooting of a 22-year-old young man in 2018, a GIGN gendarme was acquitted today by the Saint-Omer Criminal Court.
The attorney general had requested two years of imprisonment against him.
A decision which angered the victim's family.
The Saint-Omer Criminal Court on Thursday acquitted a GIGN gendarme, perpetrator of a fatal shooting of a 22-year-old young man in 2018 during an attempted arrest, arousing the anger of the victim's relatives.
“Justice is beautiful!”
cried relatives of the victim, Henri Lenfant, a member of the Traveler community.
The attorney general had requested two years of imprisonment
The anger turned into a spontaneous demonstration outside the court, with tears, screams, insults, threats.
Adults and children participated in minor damage, overturning trash cans and breaking objects belonging to traders.
“My client is relieved. Now we will wait for the appeal deadline to expire,” reacted Sébastien Busy, the lawyer for the accused, Alexandre B., at the end of the hearing.
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The attorney general had requested two years of imprisonment against him.
"This trial is above all that of a man who failed to live up to the GIGN motto 'commit for life'", he said.
“For me, there is no self-defense,” he continued, believing that the gendarme’s action was not “absolutely necessary.”
Alexandre B., then group leader of a unit at the GIGN in Reims, was prosecuted for "violence of a person holding public authority having caused death without intention of causing it", facts punishable by 20 years of imprisonment. prison.
“My wish was not to kill the person, but to save my life”
On the evening of September 28, 2018 in Fouquières-lès-Lens, his squad, called as reinforcements by the Arras gendarmerie as part of an investigation into burglaries, attempted to arrest three people in a car, members of the community traveling people.
While the passengers managed to escape, the driver, Henri Lenfant, remained at the wheel, engine off, unarmed.
The police try to extricate him from the vehicle, but he refuses to come out.
On the passenger side, door open, Alexandre B. pulls the handbrake, kneels on the passenger seat and tries, in vain, to remove the keys from the ignition.
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Henri Lenfant restarts the car and accelerates.
Alexandre B., still kneeling on the passenger seat, ends of his legs hanging in the air, insists on remaining in the vehicle.
Feeling in danger, he draws his gun and shoots, hitting the young man in the neck.
“My wish was not to kill the person, but to save my life,” he said Monday.
The president of the criminal court underlined during the debates that the arrest targeted suspects considered violent, with dangerous behavior, ready to do anything to escape arrest.
The attorney general had also requested a five-year ban on possessing a weapon, as well as ineligibility, which could prevent Alexandre B. from practicing his profession.