French police on trial for negligence in deaths of young immigrants

If policeman Sébastien Gaillemin had cried out a warning to Bouna Traoré (15) and Zyed Benna(17) on that evening in the autumn of 2005, telling them they were in danger of electrocution, the immigrant teenagers might have reached adulthood.

If policewoman Stéphanie Klein had had the presence of mind to ring the electricity company EDF when Gaillemin called in to say he thought the youths were hiding in a power substation, the young men known throughout France simply as "Bouna and Zyed" might be alive today.

That is the contention of nine civil plaintiffs and the court of cassation, which sent Gaillemin and Klein to trial in Rennes this week on charges of failing to assist persons in danger. If convicted, they risk up to five years in prison and a €75,000 fine.

The electrocution of Bouna and Zyed in an immigrant banlieue north of Paris precipitated the worst rioting in France's recent history.

Torched

A car was torched in a nearby neighbourhood just 15 minutes after their deaths were announced, the first of 10,000 destroyed over the following three weeks.

Rioting spread to 300 towns and cities. Then prime minister Dominique de Villepin declared a state of emergency, the first in France since the Algerian war. Three people were killed and 217 police were wounded. The company that insures local governments estimated the financial cost at €250 million, including 233 public buildings which were damaged or destroyed.

Nine youths from the suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois had spent that afternoon, a school holiday, playing football in the sports ground at neighbouring Livry-Gargan. As they headed home through a construction site, someone called police to say they thought the youths might be stealing building materials. Five police cars were dispatched. Six of the youths were arrested, only to be released a few hours later. They had done nothing wrong.

Chased by police, Bouna and Zyed, whose families are from Mauritania and Tunisia, scaled the four-metre fence around the power substation, along with a Kurdish friend, Muhuttin Altun, who would be severely burned by the 20,000-volt electric arc that killed Bouna and Zyed at 6.12pm.

All police radio communications are recorded, and Gaillemin’s message to Klein at 5.36pm is the central piece of evidence. From his vantage point in the cemetery overlooking the power substation, Gaillemin reported: “The two individuals have been located. They’re climbing the fence to enter the EDF site . . . If they get in there, I wouldn’t bet on their chance of survival.”

Rescue

Lawyers for the police argue they weren’t certain the teenagers were in the plant.

"The idea that they should rescue youths from the housing projects in danger of death didn't even go through their heads," said Jean-Pierre Mignard, a close friend of president Francois Hollande and the lawyer representing the victims' families.

“Did you warn them of the danger?” an investigating magistrate asked Gaillemin. “It didn’t occur to me,” he replied.

The case has prompted accusations that French police, like their counterparts in the US, enjoy impunity when they mistreat members of ethnic minorities. “Zyed and Bouna Police Kill” says graffiti splashed on walls in Rennes before the trial opened.

"We have the feeling there's one justice for citizens and another justice that protects the police," said Amal Bentounsi, spokeswoman for "Emergency Our Police Murder", one of several groups that demonstrated against police violence at the weekend.

The fact that the case took 10 years to come to trial is cited as evidence of judicial indulgence by Mignard: “There’s been a desire not to judge this case, to let time run its course; a desire to drag out procedure, which almost worked.”

French authorities have spent €6.6 billion to spruce up immigrant banlieues in the past decade. But unemployment, poverty and failure in school have only increased. The core problem of France's inability to integrate African and Arab immigrants has not changed.

Since the deaths of Bouna and Zyed, Le Monde's editorial notes, "Islam had become the marker of the banlieues". The Islamist attacks that killed 17 people in January "brought the most terrible proof of this failure".