Stéphane Burgatt (in Marseille) with AFP / Photo credit: CLEMENT MAHOUDEAU / AFP 12:32 pm, August 10, 2023

Three police officers, who were in custody since Tuesday in Marseille as part of an investigation into the death of Mohamed Bendriss, 27, probably hit by a LBD shot on the sidelines of the riots in early July, have been deferred.

Three police officers, who were in custody since Tuesday in Marseille as part of an investigation into the death of a 27-year-old man on the sidelines of the riots in early July, have been referred to the court. The investigating judge before whom the three police officers of the Raid, an elite unit, have been brought may decide either to indict them, to place them under the status of assisted witness, or to release them without prosecution.

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Five police officers had been taken into custody

In total, five police officers had been placed in custody Tuesday morning before the Marseille prosecutor's office lifted the custody of two of them in the same evening. Other police officers had also been summoned to be heard as "witnesses".

A probable LBD shot spotted during the autopsy

On the night of July 1 to 2, while the center of Marseille was plagued by damage and looting, Mohamed Bendriss, 27, had lost his life after a malaise while riding a scooter. It was during the autopsy of the body of this married man, father of a child and whose widow is expecting a second child, that had been spotted on his chest the trace of what could be the impact of a shot of LBD (launcher of defense ball).

The prosecutor's office, considering in early July "probable" that the death of this man was "caused by a violent shock to the chest caused by the firing of a projectile of + type Flash-Ball +" (another name of the LBD), had opened a judicial investigation for "fatal blows with weapon". This was entrusted to the judicial police and the General Inspectorate of the National Police (IGPN), the police of the police.

Mohamed Bendriss is the only death recorded to date on the sidelines of this episode of urban violence that broke out in several cities of France and over several days following the death of the young Nahel, killed by a police officer during a road check in Nanterre at the end of June.