Two police officers convicted and barred from serving

On Thursday 7 November 2024, the Bobigny court delivered its verdict in the case of the shooting by officers of the Stains BAC, the plainclothes anti-crime unit. The two police officers who fired on Nordine A. and Merryl B. were given four-year suspended prison sentences and permanently barred from serving in the National Police.

On 16 August 2021, two officers of the Stains BAC had opened fire on the car Nordine A. and Merryl B. were travelling in, seriously wounding them. Charged with “armed assault by persons vested with public authority”, Valentin L. and Jonathan F. had fired eight shots in less than seven seconds at the Citroën C2 driven by Nordine A. The driver, hit by five bullets, and his rear-seat passenger, Merryl B., hit in the back, both survived their injuries.

In 2022, Index had published a video investigation into the case. Based on smartphone footage filmed by a witness and on material from the case file, the organisation had produced a 3D digital reconstruction of the incident.

At the request of Nordine A. and Merryl B.’s lawyers, this reconstruction was screened at the hearing of 3 October 2024 before the Bobigny criminal court (tribunal correctionnel), to help the court understand how events unfolded. The screening was fiercely contested: the officers’ defence lawyer, Laurent-Franck Lienard, strongly objected, while one of Nordine A.’s lawyers, Vincent Brengarth, argued that Index’s investigation “makes the link between the ballistics report and the witness’s video”. The presiding judge ruled in favour of the screening, and the video was used to inform the proceedings.

At the end of that hearing, prosecutors had concluded that the conditions for self-defence were not met, describing the two officers’ actions as “inappropriate, dangerous, including for themselves”, and had called for each to be sentenced to one year in prison, none of it suspended but adjustable, and a five-year ban on carrying a weapon.