After several months of investigation, the police officer involved in the death of Nahel Merzouk, a 17-year-old French-Algerian, which sparked a wave of riots across France in June 2023, will be tried for murder.
The police officer’s indictment for murder comes just after outrageously lenient sentences handed down by Paris courts to rioters who ransacked Paris following Paris Saint-Germain’s victory in the Champions League final last Saturday.
Let us recall the facts. Merzouk was killed on June 27th, 2023, during a routine check of the vehicle he was driving illegally, after he refused to comply with police orders. The police officer who fired the shot that killed Nahel claimed that the young man drove the car at him, and he therefore opened fire in self-defence. The testimonies of the passengers in the car contradicted this version, claiming that the police officer deliberately shot Nahel.
Initially, the police officer’s version of events was accepted. However, on Tuesday, June 3rd, the Nanterre court announced that he would be held responsible for Nahel’s death and charged with murder.
William Molinié, deputy editor-in-chief for radio station Europe 1 and Le Journal du Dimanche on security issues, has conducted a rigorous analysis of the police officer’s indictment. The officer’s feelings are systematically minimised or even denied in it, Molinié says. The charge of intent to kill is not based on “direct evidence” but on “presumptions of fact”: the use of a “dangerous weapon” and the “location of the wound in a vital part of the body,” implying that the police officer deliberately killed Nahel—even though the investigation established that the trajectory of the shot was deflected by the car.
The court’s decision has sparked controversy among the police officer’s many supporters, who believe that law enforcement officers are being systematically scapegoated. At the time of the riots, a fund was set up to support the policeman, who was placed in pre-trial detention following Nahel’s death and denied visits. The question of establishing a systematic presumption of self-defence in favour of the police in cases of ‘police blunders’ (bavures) has also been raised. A bill to this effect was proposed by the Rassemblement National in December 2024, but was vigorously opposed by the Left on the grounds that it would give the police a “‘licence to kill.” The proposal has not yet been submitted to parliament.
Matthieu Valet, spokesman for the RN and former police officer, expressed his dismay at the announcement of the Nanterre court’s decision, telling Europe 1 that the entire police force is “sickened.”