Hundreds march in Paris suburb after teen killed in police chase

Several hundred marched peacefully in a Paris suburb on Thursday to demand justice for a teenager killed last week in a collision with a police car.

Published: 22 March 2024 08:29 CET

Hundreds march in Paris suburb after teen killed in police chase

People hold banners reading 'Justice for Wanys and Ibrahim' during a 'Marche Blanche' in La Courneuve, held to pay tribute to the eighteen year-old Wanys R. who was killed while driving a scooter pursued by police after refusing to stop. Ibrahim, his passenger, was injured. Photo by Bertrand GUAY / AFP

The death of Wanys R. has sparked tensions in the town of La Courneuve, a suburb to the north of Paris.

Police on March 13th chased a moped that the 18-year-old was driving in the nearby town of Aubervilliers after it said he refused to comply with a traffic stop.

A video widely shared online showed a police car striking his scooter, killing him and injuring his passenger.

Police and the investigation so far say it was an accident, but his family have accused them of “voluntarily” hitting the scooter.

His older brother, who did not wish to give his name, spoke to the press on the steps of the La Courneuve townhall.

“My little brother was killed by the police. They decided to take his life unfairly,” he said, his face covered with a black face mask and sunglasses.

“We are only seeking justice. No violence, no excess,” he said, before the march set off.

Seventeen-year-old Taif went to the same school as Wanys R.

“The police have made it normal to kill people like him, young people,” she said, not wishing to give her full name.

On Sunday evening, people fired a barrage of fireworks at the La Courneuve police station, according to footage posted on social media. Police said the attackers also threw stones and Molotov cocktails.

Police responded with sting-ball grenades, teargas and flash-ball projectiles, it said. The police station suffered no damaged.

La Courneuve is located in Paris’s northern suburbs, in the Seine-Saint-Denis département.

In June, a video of a police officer shooting dead 17-year-old Nahel M. triggered nights of riots in the Paris suburbs and other deprived areas.

The policeman who fired the fatal shot has been charged with voluntary homicide.

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Police intervened as dozens of students gathered on a central Paris campus of the prestigious Sciences Po university on Wednesday evening, management said.

“After discussions with management, most of them agreed to leave the premises,” university officials said in a statement to AFP, saying the protest was adding to “tensions” at the university.

But “a small group of students” refused to leave and “it was decided that the police would evacuate the site,” the statement added.

Sciences Po said it regretted that “numerous attempts” to have the students leave the premises peacefully had led nowhere.

According to the police préfecture, students had set up around 10 tents.

When members of law enforcement arrived, “50 students left on their own, 70 were evacuated calmly from 0.20am” and the police “left at 1.30am, with no incidents to report,” the police said.

The protesters demanded that Sciences Po “cut its ties with universities and companies that are complicit in the genocide in Gaza” and “end the repression of pro-Palestinian voices on campus,” according to witnesses.

The protest was organised by the Palestine Committee of Sciences Po.

In a statement on Thursday, the group said its activists had been “carried out of the school by more than fifty members of the security forces,” adding that “around a hundred” police officers were “also waiting for them outside”.

Sciences Po management “stubbornly refuses to engage in genuine dialogue,” the group said.

The organisers have called for “a clear condemnation of Israel’s actions by Sciences Po” and a commemorative event “in memory of the innocent people killed by Israel,” among other demands.

Separately, the Student Union of Sciences Po Paris said the decision by university officials to call in the police was “both shocking and deeply worrying” and reflected “an unprecedented authoritarian turn”.

Many top US universities have been rocked by protests in recent weeks, with some students furious over the Israel-Hamas war and ensuing humanitarian crisis in the besieged Palestinian territory of Gaza.

France is home to the world’s largest Jewish population after Israel and the United States, as well as Europe’s biggest Muslim community.

The war in Gaza began with an unprecedented attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas on Israel on October 7th that resulted in the deaths of around 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

In retaliation, Israel launched a military offensive that has killed at least 34,305 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.