Yellow Vest protester Manuel Coisne lost an eye: the courts will examine Didier Lallement’s responsibility
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For the first time, the former Paris police prefect Didier Lallement is to be implicated as the “person who gave the orders”, following a complaint by a victim of a tear gas grenade shot.
Manuel Coisne was seriously injured in the face by a tear gas grenade shot on 16 November 2019, during the first anniversary of the Yellow Vests movement at Place d’Italie in Paris. The impact cost him the use of one eye.
An investigation by the newspaper Le Monde, corroborated by a ballistics expert report during the judicial investigation, established that the CRS riot police officer who fired had done so on a flat trajectory, in breach of the rules governing the use of his weapon. In October 2024, the courts ordered the officer to stand trial before a criminal court (cour criminelle) for “assault” committed “by a person vested with public authority”.
The officer, however, appealed against that decision. It was while examining that appeal that the Paris Court of Appeal ordered the investigating judge to look into a complaint filed in the same case against the former Paris police prefect, Didier Lallement.
In its ruling, the investigating chamber of the Court of Appeal noted that Lallement had ordered the police to kettle the square and an “uncontrolled and dangerous use of weapons”, thereby creating the conditions that led to Manuel Coisne’s injury.