After the attack on seven police officers outside of their duty on Saturday evening in Reims, prosecutor François Schneider denounced on Tuesday “extreme” and “perfectly gratuitous” violence against a group “which had asked nothing of anyone”.
These are “facts of quite exceptional gravity. The images (…) are extremely violent and above all completely gratuitous,” declared the prosecutor during a press conference.
Two brothers with a long criminal record, one of whom had just been released from prison, were indicted Monday evening for “aggravated violence against persons holding public authority” after the attack perpetrated in the center of Reims.
While they were supposed to meet in a restaurant for a farewell drink after their shift, the police officers were targeted with “a belt” as well as “kicks” and “punches”, he detailed.
Around ten attackers
According to the prosecutor, certain elements of the investigation “suggest that they were informed of the quality of the police officers. There are, objectively, no other explanations for this gratuitous lynching,” he added.
“It’s abject,” reacted to AFP Mathieu Dufour, departmental secretary of the Alliance police union. “They were immediately jumped and lynched. There was no discussion with the perpetrators of the violence,” he added, deploring a situation that was “difficult to understand”.
Other attackers are still being sought, according to the prosecutor who indicates that “there were around ten” in total.
The magistrate specified that the two indicted were “young people who had already been checked” by police officers and who were therefore “perfectly likely to (…) know” the victims.
Aged 26 and 27 and originally from Mayotte, the suspects, two brothers “well known to the police”, were placed in pre-trial detention and face 20 years in prison.
“Ultra-violence”
Both were “summoned today before the criminal court for acts of supply or transfer of narcotics and non-disclosure of codes in two different cases”, detailed Mr. Schneider.
One of them has already “been sentenced to six years of imprisonment by the Grenoble Criminal Court for violent theft, kidnapping and kidnapping” and the other “has increased the sentences for violence”.
The two suspects “recognized absolutely nothing, explaining that they had been there, but by chance, and not having seen anything,” reported the prosecutor.
“The incapacity for work is 28 days for the police officer who has a broken ankle and 6 to 10 days for the others who were really beaten up,” detailed Mr. Schneider. “It was a real lynching of an entire ultra-violent group,” he insisted.
