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Outrage and agony at funeral of boy whose ‘execution’ set France alight
The number of mourners was so large, crowds spilled out of the Parisian mosque and stopped traffic as they prayed in the middle of the street. The killing of 17-year-old Nahel Marzouk by the police has been labelled an “execution” and has ignited the fury of the nation, sparking a level of unrest not seen in France for over a decade. At least 2,400 people have been arrested across the country, curfews imposed and public transport curtailed as open street battles raged between protesters and police, and looting became rampant. In response, President Emmanuel Macron deployed 45,000 officers, including elite anti-terrorism units and armoured vehicles which scour the streets. But on Saturday, at Nahel’s funeral at a mosque in Nanterre, the west Paris suburb where he lived and was fatally shot, the most glaring absence was the security forces. Volunteers from the local community instead curtly policed the streets, which are scrawled with the phrase “the country of police impunity”. They reined in the emotions, which ran high when the body was brought out to a hearse escorted by hundreds of people on foot and on scooters. “It is finished,” Nahel mother Mounia said bravely, in a cloud of female well-wishers after the coffin was lowered into the earth. “He has gone to paradise.” Nahel – a teenager of Moroccan and Algerian origin – was shot by a police officer during a traffic stop on Tuesday: an incident which was caught on mobile phone footage, and showed Nahel driving away from the officers before one fired at him. Outraged at the murder, and the apparent efforts by the police to paint Nahel as a troubled teenager wanted by the law, thousands have protested across the country. Nahel’s death was “the last drop to cause the vase to overflow”, family friends repeatedly told The Independent. France exploded. For four nights the streets of cities including Paris, Marseille, Lyon, Toulouse, Strasbourg and Lille have been ablaze with looters ransacking dozens of shops and torching 2000 vehicles according to the interior ministry. There have been calls for calm and for President Macron to impose a state of emergency, with more unrest on the horizon. The United Nations has also weighed in urging the country to “seriously address the deep issues of racism and discrimination in law enforcement”. It has taken a toll on Mr Macron’s diplomatic profile. On Saturday Mr Macron was forced to postpone what would have been the first state visit by a French president to Germany in 23 years, citing internal security issues. In the funeral march to the hill-top cemetery friends of the family said they were in “deep shock” and talked of struggling with racism endemic in the French police force. “I’m shaken, we all are, especially as a mother with children living in this neighbourhood,” said Theresa, 60, who lived next door to Nahel’s grandmother and personally knew the teenager, she described as “smiley, hardworking and kind”. “Thank god there is a video, the police are lying all the time. This might change things,” she added. Mohamed, 60, who is also part of the Algerian community in Nanterre and a friend of Nahel’s mother Mounia, said they were all treated like “second-class citizens”. “Nahel was his mother’s entire world, and now he is gone. She has lost everything. We simply do not get the same rights.” Nahel was his mother’s entire world, and now he is gone. We do not get the same rights Mohamed, friend of the family His comments were echoed by half-a-dozen other mourners The Independent spoke to throughout the day. “If you are not white, you’re not equal. There is a two-tiered nationality system,” said Abdelmalek Hamchoui, 62, a local community leader. “I’m made to feel like I’m only French on paper,” added Hadhrami Belhachemi, 35. And so the incident has thrown a searing spotlight onto France’s judicial and legal system. Abdelmadjid Benamara, one of the family’s lawyers who is also from Nanterre, called Nahel’s killing an “execution” and told The Independent it was just the latest in a long line of alarming incidents committed by the French police. He called for a slew of investigations into police response to the incident and for major reforms to the legal system. You have to call a spade a spade: this is an execution Abdelmadjid Benamara, Nahel’s family lawyer “You can’t be hypocritical about it. When a policeman kills a young teenager you have to call a spade a spade: this is an execution. You have to open the correct investigation,” he added. While the police officer who fired the shot was taken in custody on charges of voluntary homicide when a video of the incident emerged, the second police officer on the scene has not been charged and is still working, Mr Benamara continued. “The problem is with the legal system as a whole after a 2017 bill relaxed the rules around police officers' rights to use their firearms.” “In 2022 there were 13 instances where the French police fired on citizens, in similar circumstances to Nahel M’s killing. Of those only five are being investigated” he added. The only difference this time is that there is a video of the event. “There is a social contract between the people and the government that has been broken. There is no trust any more,” he added. The unrest has also revived memories of riots in 2005 that rocked France for three weeks and forced then-president Jacques Chirac to declare a state of emergency. That wave of violence erupted in the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois and spread across the country following the death of two young men who ended up being electrocuted in a power substation as they hid from police. Many people The Independent spoke to said nothing had changed since then. “I’ve been living in this neighbourhood for 27 years, and it has only got more racist every year,” Laslah Baghdad, 58, another mourner from Nanterre said back at Nahel’s funeral. “How you fight that I don’t know .” The explosion of rage across the country, triggered by the video evidence of Nahel’s killing that points to homocide, might be the catalyst for a different future, Theresa continued. “We have an expression: 100 years for the thief, a year for the master. This really embodies the situation here,” she said. “But now we feel change will happen.” Read More France riots - latest: Mourners line street for funeral of teenager shot dead by police Watch: View of Nanterre as funeral held for teenager shot dead by French police Rioters attack Strasbourg Apple store over Paris police shooting Rioting rages across France for fourth night ahead of funeral for teenager shot dead by police Who is Nahel M? The teen shot dead by police in France
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Inside Russia’s torture chambers as investigators warn Khershon cells ‘tip of iceberg’
Harrowing new accounts of Ukrainians being tortured during Russia’s eight-month occupation of Kherson are “just the tip of the iceberg”, an international team investigating the alleged war crimes has warned. The acts described by those detained in dozens of makeshift detention centres – including the use of sexual violence as a common tactic among Russian guards, and genital electrocution – are “evocative of genocide”, the team of lawyers and prosecutors said this week. The UN’s special rapporteur on torture, Alice Jill Edwards, told The Independent that similarities in the accounts of victims across several different regions of Ukraine “expose a deeper concern that torture and intimidation are a policy and strategy of the Russian state”. Top Ukrainian officials have accused Moscow of genocidal aims ever since Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine last February, with The Independent among the first to witness evidence of human rights abuses by Russian troops in the aftermath of the first Russian retreats from territory near Kyiv. Accounts of Russian torture chambers in Kherson first began to emerge soon after Russia’s forces retreated from the key Black Sea port city in November, having captured it one month into their full-scale invasion last February. Earlier this week, a team of prosecutors, experts and analysts – funded by Britain, the EU and US – helping Ukraine’s prosecutor general to sift through that evidence published a summary of its findings among an initial pool of 320 detainees held at more than 35 detention centres. Of those victims, at least 43 per cent explicitly mentioned practices of torture in those centres – with commonly used techniques including suffocation, waterboarding, severe beatings and threats of rape, said the team led by humanitarian law firm Global Rights Compliance. At least 36 detainees mentioned the use of electrocution during interrogations, often genital electrocution. Other victims mentioned threats of genital mutilation, and at least one victim was forced to witness the rape of another detainee by a foreign object covered in a condom, the group said. While those detained included medical workers, teachers, volunteers, activists, community leaders, and law enforcement officials, current and former soldiers appear to be the detainees most likely to have experienced torture in the facilities, according to the investigators. The team of investigators says it has managed to identify individual Russian perpetrators – including one soldier, Oleksandr Naumenko, alleged to have ordered the genital electrocution of 17 different victims. However, the Kremlin has consistently denied allegations of war crimes in Ukraine, and Russia’s defence ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report's findings. Responding to the findings, the UN’s special rapporteur said: “The recent collection of interviews are similar in a number of key respects to testimonies I have received as Special Rapporteur on torture, albeit my representations to the Russian authorities are based on information in the regions of Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia. “The similarities in practice across regional zones expose a deeper concern that torture and intimidation are a policy and strategy of the Russian State. “And as such, it is presently hard to envisage that perpetrators will face justice in Russia. That said, the careful and continuous collection of evidence must go on.” Denis Krivosheev, Amnesty International’s deputy director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia, said: “Sadly, these practices are very, very familiar to any one of us who has done research into the Russian security forces and how they deal with civilians.” Pointing to past human rights abuses by Russian troops in the North Caucasus and occupied Crimea, Mr Krivosheev told The Independent: “So it is not at all surprising, but no less shocking, to read about this in territories that Russian forces have occupied in Ukraine.” Mr Krivosheev said many of the details of the Kherson report chimed with his own past experience of Russian torture practices in those arenas, where captives suffered “a lot of” sexualised violence and electrocution, with it being “very common” to target the latter on detainees’ genitalia. Compounding fears of a concerted effort by Moscow to subjugate Ukraine’s population using such methods, Global Rights Compliance co-founder Wayne Jordash KC unveiled evidence in March suggesting the Kherson “torture chambers were planned and directly financed by the Russian state”. Commenting on the new findings, he said: “The torture and sexual violence tactics the [Ukrainian prosecutor’s office] is uncovering from the Kherson detention centres suggests that Putin’s plan to extinguish Ukrainian identity includes a range of crimes evocative of genocide. “At the very least, the pattern that we are observing is consistent with a cynical and calculated plan to humiliate and terrorise millions of Ukrainian citizens in order to subjugate them to the diktat of the Kremlin.” Ukrainian authorities are reviewing more than 97,000 reports of war crimes across Ukraine and have filed charges against 220 suspects in domestic courts. High-level perpetrators could be tried at the International Criminal Court, which has already issued a warrant for Mr Putin’s arrest. “The true scale of Russia’s war crimes remains unknown, but what we can say for certain is that the psychological consequences of these cruel crimes on Ukrainian people will be engrained in their minds for years to come,” said Anna Mykytenko, a senior legal adviser at Global Rights Compliance. “What we are witnessing in Kherson is just the tip of the iceberg in Putin’s barbaric plan to obliterate an entire population. Justice will be served for Ukrainian survivors as we continue our mission to identify and hold perpetrators accountable. Impunity is not an option.” While Mr Krivosheev said he could not say based on the evidence available to Amnesty that alleged torture in Kherson was “a way of dealing with the entire population”, he said he had “certainly” witnessed Russian troops using such practices to instill fear across whole populations previously. Condemning a failure among the international community to properly address Russia’s past crimes in the North Caucasus and Crimea, Mr Krivosheev said Amnesty would strive alongside those seeking to bring “all those responsible to account for war crimes, including torture, in fair trials”. “These crimes have no statute of limitation, and this is the only way to ensure justice and prevent such crimes in the future,” he said. Read More Tales of torture emerge as Kherson celebrates freedom from months of Russian occupation In the dark shadow of Putin’s war: Murder, mass graves and torture mark a Russian retreat Life after the Kakhovka dam explosion | On The Ground Why Russia’s attacks on Ukraine’s ports matter for us all
2023-08-05 15:52

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