The operation had been planned for several days. On January 11, no less than 130 police officers, judicial police investigators, members of the Research and Intervention Brigade (BRI) and the Raid were mobilized in Moselle, in order to arrest 16 individuals suspected of having participated to the urban riots of June 2023. Aged 17 to 30, they are notably suspected of having violently attacked the Hagondange police station on June 30, three days after the death of young Nahel in Nanterre, killed by gunfire. police. That evening, dozens of rioters, most of them hooded, attacked this building located about fifteen kilometers from Metz, using Molotov cocktails and stones recovered from the ballast of the neighboring railway tracks. “They took turns in small groups, they set fire to two cars parked in front of the police station, and they tried to force entry. At the height of the attack, there were around forty of them letting off steam at the same time” , says Fabrice Marseu, union representative of SGP Police Unit in Moselle.
“The facts are extremely serious. Our colleague could have been burned, or even worse. We could not let these young people leave as if nothing had happened,” insists Commissioner Antoine Baudant, head of the interdepartmental service of the Metz judicial police. After the shock, its teams began a long investigation. All video surveillance recordings from the police station and surrounding establishments are analyzed, the images are reworked in order to obtain the clearest possible result, social networks are scrutinized, and telephone operators requisitioned in order to obtain the precious demarcation of mobile phones reported that night near the police station. At the same time, multiple DNA evidence is collected by investigators and sent to forensic laboratories for analysis. “These are very long and very expensive procedures, which cost thousands of euros. The human exploitation of all these elements then allowed us to identify these 16 individuals,” summarizes Commissioner Baudant.
Of the 16 people arrested, 15 were finally indicted on Saturday January 13. Four are being prosecuted for attempted murder – a crime punishable by life imprisonment. Nine were completely unknown to the police, and six were minors at the time of the events, Metz public prosecutor Yves Bardoc told L’Express. “Many of these young people were very surprised by their arrest: they did not expect that they would be found. Some express remorse, others not at all. There are some who do not even really know who is Nahel”, deplores Commissioner Baudant, disappointed by the “massive addiction to social networks” observed among some arrested. “This is a major element, which largely favored their action: they wanted to do like the others, to broadcast their images, without any filter and without any discernment,” he regrets.
“It’s lace”
Over the weeks that followed the urban violence, Moselle investigators were not the only ones to have worked hard to find those responsible. “One month after the riots, 300 arrests were added to the 3,800 made during the commission of the facts, via the extremely meticulous work of the entire investigation sector,” indicates the spokesperson for the national police Sonia Fibleuil, without being able to specify the final assessment of the number of arrests since June. “The investigations are extremely meticulous, it’s lace. And they make it possible, even today, to arrest suspects,” adds Agnès Aubouin, prosecutor of Châteauroux. Between December 2023 and January 2024, six people were indicted in Indre – including four minors -, suspected of participating in a group with a view to committing violence, damage by fire to public property or even violence against the forces of the order.
“The particularity of the riots is that they lasted several nights: the police watched hundreds of hours of video, with colossal investigative work which is paying off today,” summarizes the prosecutor with L’ Express. Same results in Eure, where 36 people have been arrested since the summer, including 20 minors. “A series of arrests took place over three consecutive weeks in December, six months after the riots,” explains Evreux prosecutor Rémi Coutin. Of the 16 adults arrested, nine were sentenced to prison terms, including four with warrants of committal, and three still have to be tried at the start of the year. They are accused of having destroyed public property, in particular the public finance center of Vernon or certain town halls, or of violence against the police. “In two cases, young adults were arrested for having sold or attempted to sell illegal explosive devices to other young people,” adds Rémi Coutin.
In Orléans, the observation is similar: since June, 68 individuals have been arrested, including 12 on the single day of November 22, 2023. They are notably suspected of having participated in the looting and damage to a tobacconist, of a motorcycle store, a bus and the Fleury-les-Aubrais police office on the night of June 29 to 30, 2023, for damage amounting to more than 650,000 euros. Following their arrest, 11 people were brought before the courts, six were placed in detention and five were released under judicial supervision. On December 15, five of these rioters were sentenced to prison, one of which was suspended on probation, while the last was acquitted.
According to the Orléans public prosecutor’s office, the requisitions are based in particular on videos broadcast on social networks and captured by the co-perpetrators of the defendants – themselves “unidentified and/or unidentifiable” -, on which the suspects could be observed featuring “with objects stolen from the police station such as bulletproof vests, batons and even grenades”. “These young people follow absolutely everything that happens on the networks: they saw the violence and wanted to do the same thing in their town. Many don’t really talk about Nahel, say they are a bit of a follower… But the images found on Snapchat or other cannot be denied, especially since they are corroborated by other video surveillance sequences, and especially the DNA found on the stolen objects”, Thierry Guiguet-Doron, director, told L’Express. interdepartmental of the Loiret national police.
Gloves, surgical masks and broken bottles
Forensic police analyzes notably made it possible to arrest 412 individuals between June 27 and mid-January 2024, according to the director of the Paris forensic laboratory Christel Sire-Coupet. More than 350 files have been received by all laboratories since last June, for a total of 2,000 seals analyzed. “Most of these pieces of evidence were paving stones, mortars or mortar wicks, lighters, bottles, remains of Molotov cocktails,” describes Christel Sire-Coupet. Sometimes, innocuous objects make it possible to find the culprits of damage. In Paris, two male profiles already known to the police were able to be identified on a surgical mask and a pair of gloves left near the fire scene of two schools in La Verrière (Yvelines), the damage of which was estimated more than 20 million euros.
“The services were extremely busy: seals were received until last November,” indicates the director of the Paris scientific police. “Most of these individuals were first-time offenders. If they are arrested several months later for other offenses, their profile matches our analyses, and they can thus be identified,” she explains. “When you know that a genetic analysis sample costs 165 euros, and that we have carried out more than 2,500 just for the riots, you understand that all this is calculated in tens of thousands of euros,” underlines Christel Sire-Coupet.
The same goes for the essential telephone marking, which allows investigators to identify which devices were present at the scene of the violence. “It is not free: there is a principle of fair remuneration with a fixed price fixed by the State for each operation, whether demarcation, identification data or access to the content of telephones,” indicates a national operator at L’Express, without specifying the price of this package. “Operators are being asked more and more about the subject,” it is simply added. According to the 2022 activity report of the National Commission for the Control of Intelligence Techniques (CNCTR), 10,901 requests for access to real-time geolocation data were made in 2022, compared to 5,191 in 2018 – an increase of 110% in five years.
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