PARIS (AFP) – French prosecutors said they had demanded a police officer be tried over the 2023 killing of a teenager at a traffic stop that sparked nationwide protests against police brutality and riots.
The investigating judge, however, is yet to issue an order for a trial, and the policeman’s lawyer can appeal. The officer shot Nahel Merzouk, 17, at close range during a traffic stop in the Paris suburb of Nanterre on June 27, 2023, in an incident captured on mobile phone footage that went viral.
The police officer, identified only as Florian M, has been charged with voluntary homicide but was released from custody in November 2023 after five months in detention.
The prosecutor’s office in Nanterre on Monday recommended that the police officer be tried, and that charges against a colleague for complicity in murder be dropped, it said.
The mobile phone footage contradicted the police’s original version of events according to which Nahel Merzouk had driven at the officer.
The footage showed two police officers standing by the side of a stationary car, with one pointing a weapon at its driver.
The images, and apparent disconnect with the official version of events, caused public outrage.
The two officers claimed their lives were in danger because they were trapped between the car and a wall.
But, the investigation showed, the teenager’s car “was blocked in traffic, and even if he had tried to restart the car, he does not appear to have represented an immediate threat” to the policemen.
