A French court was to deliver its verdict yesterday in the case of two police officers accused of not helping two youths electrocuted in 2005, whose deaths sparked three weeks of rioting.
The violent deaths of Bouna Traore, 15, and Zyed Benna, 17, after a police chase ignited three weeks of arson and clashes with security forces in city suburbs.
Officers Sebastien Gaillemin and Stephanie Klein stand accused of “non-assistance to individuals in danger” by failing to raise the alarm after the two youths ran into an electricity substation.
They each face a five-year prison sentence and a fine of up to 75,000 euros (US$85,397) if found guilty, but both the prosecution and defense have called for them to be let off.
Gaillemin told the court during the trial that he had checked twice to see whether the youths were still in the substation and, satisfied that they were not, left the scene.
“As he was not aware of the danger, he cannot be blamed for not acting to deal with it,” prosecutor Delphine Dewailly said.
“You do not ease the pain of one drama by adding another injustice,” she told the court.
If the court follows the prosecution’s recommendation and throws out the case, there is no possibility of appeal.
Daniel Merchant, a lawyer for the officers, said: “There will only be closure if they are let off. The case will then be closed... Ten years, that is enough now.”
Merchant added that in the case of a conviction, he would appeal on behalf of his client.
However, relatives of the two dead youths — as well as a third youth who escaped with burns — have launched a civil case seeking a total of 1.6 million euros in compensation and damages.
A lawyer for the families said he was certain that the officers were guilty of failing to aid the teens.
“Let us call the crime what it is,” Jean-Pierre Mignard said.
Much of the trial turned on a phrase Gaillemin said in the chase.
According to transcripts from the police radio, he was heard to say: “They are climbing over to get to the EDF [electric company] site. If they enter the EDF site, I do not give them much of a chance.”
During the trial, Gaillemin said he was only aware that the teens were running “toward the site” and was not sure they had entered it.
As the trial opened, presiding judge Nicolas Leger said the court was “well aware of the particular suffering” of the families, but stressed it was neither “a trial of the national police” nor a ruling on the “riots that shook France.”
Nevertheless, the trial has again brought to the fore the alienation felt by many in France’s ghetto-like suburbs, which French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said earlier this year still represent a form of “territorial, social and ethnic apartheid.”
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