The grandmother of Nahel M tells rioters to stop the violence, saying she has ‘faith in the judiciary’ to bring justice.
The grandmother of 17-year-old Nahel M has called for calm after days of unrest in France over his fatal shooting during a routine police traffic check.
“The people who are breaking things right now, I tell them: stop it,” the woman identified as Nadia by French media told BFMTV on Sunday.
“They used Nahel as an excuse,” she added.
The shooting of the teenager of North African origin, caught on video, has reignited long-standing complaints about police violence and racism by poor and racially mixed urban communities.
Several hundred people on Saturday rallied at Nanterre’s grand mosque, in the Paris suburbs, to express their support for the family as the teenager was buried.
Then, for a fifth night in a row, rioters damaged and ransacked shops, burned cars and buses, and violently clashed with 45,000 police officers sent across the country to quell France’s worst social upheaval in years.
‘Horror and disgrace’
Politicians condemned the attack on the home of Vincent Jeanbrun, the right-wing mayor of L’Hay-les-Roses outside Paris, in which assailants rammed a burning car into his home with the aim of setting it on fire.
Jeanbrun’s wife and children, aged five and seven, were at home while the mayor was out. His wife was “badly injured”, sustaining a broken leg. Prosecutors opened an attempted murder investigation.
“Last night the horror and disgrace reached a new level,” the mayor said in a statement.
Some 7,000 police were deployed in Paris and its suburbs alone, including along the Champs Elysees avenue in the capital, a tourist hot spot, following calls on social media to take the rioting to the heart of the city.
Source: Aljazeera
Richard Koomson| mediacentralonline.info |Ghana
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