Europe 1 with AFP // Photo credit: Loïc Venance/AFP 5:58 p.m., February 23, 2024

The Douai public prosecutor's office announced this Friday that it would appeal the acquittal of the GIGN gendarme.

The Pas-de-Calais criminal court tried him for a fatal shooting in 2018 of a 22-year-old young man during an arrest.

The attorney general had requested two years of imprisonment.

The appeal will be examined by the Northern Assize Court. 

The Douai general prosecutor's office announced on Friday that it would appeal the acquittal of the GIGN gendarme acquitted Thursday by the criminal court of Pas-de-Calais, where he was on trial for a fatal shooting in 2018 of a 22-year-old young man during a 'one of arrest.

“This appeal will be examined by the Assize Court of the North, an appeal body for the departmental criminal court,” he said in a press release.

“The hearing date will be specified later.”

The attorney general had requested two years of imprisonment

“Justice is beautiful!” cried relatives of the victim, Henri Lenfant, a member of the Traveler community, after the verdict on Thursday.

The anger turned into a spontaneous demonstration outside the court, with tears, screams, insults, threats.

Adults and children had participated in minor damage, overturning trash cans and breaking objects belonging to traders.

The attorney general had requested two years' imprisonment for the gendarme, rejecting the notion of "self-defense".

Alexandre B., then group leader of a unit at the GIGN in Reims, was tried for "violence of a person holding public authority having caused death without intention of causing it", facts punishable by 20 years of imprisonment. prison.

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Death of a young man during an arrest: a GIGN gendarme acquitted

The facts date back to the evening of September 28, 2018 in Fouquières-lès-Lens, when his squad, called as reinforcements by the Arras gendarmerie as part of an investigation into burglaries, tried to arrest three people in a car, members of the Traveler community.

The passengers managed to escape, but 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.

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 on Monday.