Cop charged of teen driver killing as riots engulf Paris suburbs

The 17-year-old’s mother said the officer responsible ‘saw an Arab face, a little kid, and wanted to take his life’.

Mounia, the mother of Nahel, leads the march in Nanterre on Thursday. Picture: AFP

French police are braced for more violent protests over the fatal shooting of a teen by a policeman that has left authorities scrambling to contain an escalating ­crisis.

According to an internal security note, the coming nights are expected “to be the theatre of urban violence” with “actions targeted at the forces of order and the symbols of the state”, a source said.

One Paris suburb, Clamart, ­declared an overnight curfew from Thursday until next Monday.

France has been roiled by two nights of protests after a 17-year-old named Nahel was shot point-blank on Tuesday during a traffic stop that was captured on video.

“I don’t blame the police, I blame one person: the one who took the life of my son,” Nahel’s mother, Mounia, told media.

She said the 38-year-old officer responsible, who was detained and charged Thursday with voluntary manslaughter, “saw an Arab face, a little kid, and wanted to take his life”. Longstanding grievances about policing and ­racial profiling in France’s low-income and multi-ethnic suburbs are seen as fuelling the rioting.

A memorial march for Nahel, led by his mother, ended with riot police firing teargas as several cars being set alight in the western Paris suburb of Nanterre where he lived and was killed.

Some 40,000 police were ­mobilised to try to keep the peace on Thursday night, more than four times Wednesday’s numbers. Cars, schools and government offices were torched on Wednesday night across Paris and in other cities, and 150 people were arrested.

Nahel was killed as he pulled away from police who tried to stop him for a traffic infraction.

A video showed two policemen standing by the side of the stationary car, with one pointing a weapon at the driver. A voice is heard saying: “You are going to get a bullet in the head.” The police officer then appears to fire as the car abruptly drives off. The video contradicted police accounts that the teen was driving at the officer.

AFP