France riots today live: ‘Insulting’ fundraiser for officer who shot teen hits €1m as fraction raised for victim

Fundraising for the family of the police officer who shot 17-year-old Nahel Merzouk has amassed more than €1 million (£840,000).

Organised by Jean Messiha, a former adviser to the French far-right politician Marine Le Pen, the appeal has raised far more than the donation page set up for the family of the teenage victim.

The page says that the 38-year-old officer, who has been charged with murder and is being remanded in custody, “is today paying the biggest price” for “doing his job”.

The donation page set up for the family of Nahel has raised less than a quarter of the amount at just over €200,000 (£171,918).

Criminal lawyer Carole-Olivia Monteno told BFM TV: “It’s insulting to Nahel’s family, it only increases hate where there’s too much of it already, its completely inappropriate and politically it does nothing.”

Holidaymakers have been advised by a travel expert not to cancel their trips to France following five nights of unrest but to stay “flexible” and avoid big cities at night-time.

Rioting has spread across the country following the fatal shooting by police of 17-year-old boy Nahel in the Paris suburb of Nanterre on Tuesday.

The UK Government updated its guidance for travellers to France to warn of “potential disruption” but it does not advise against travel to the country.

Health Secretary Steve Barclay encouraged people considering travelling to France to check the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) for updated advice.

Crowds gathered at town halls across France Monday to show solidarity with local governments targeted in six nights of unrest touched off by the police shooting of a 17-year-old.

The riots, which seemed to be easing overnight into Monday, were driven by a teenage backlash in the suburbs and urban housing projects against a French state that many young people with immigrant roots say routinely discriminates against them. In all, 99 town halls have been attacked in the violence, along with other public buildings, according to the Interior Ministry.

French President Emmanuel Macron was meeting Monday with mayors of 220 towns from across the country. Across France, 34 buildings were attacked overnight — many of them linked to the government — along with 297 vehicles.

There has been little in the way of organized protests beyond a march last week for Nahel, the teenager of Algerian descent who was killed on Tuesday in the Paris suburb of Nanterre. Instead, the anger has manifested with young people targeting police and both sides using increasingly aggressive tactics.

The anger has descended into attacks against symbols of the state, widespread arson and nighttime looting. About 45,000 officers were deployed nationwide against violence that the mayor of Nanterre, Patrick Jarry, said hurt young people above all.

“We want justice for Nahel and that the calls for an end of the violence expressed by his grandmother and mother be respected,” said Jarry, speaking in front of his city hall, which escaped attack.

Nahel Merzouk was laid to rest in the Paris suburb of Nanterre, where the 17-year-old had been shot dead by a police officer during a traffic stop on Tuesday, triggering days of fierce clashes.

More than 700 people were arrested following the funeral on Saturday as police fired tear gas and fought street battles with protestors late into the night in flashpoint Marseilles.

Footage shows the traffic stop in which a French police officer fatally shot a 17-year-old delivery driver in a Paris suburb on Tuesday, 27 June.

Video shows two policemen by the window of a yellow car and the sound of a gunshot before the vehicle drives off.

Further footage shows the car crashed by a Nanterre building.

Protests have erupted in the two days following the shooting, with fireworks thrown at police and cars set on fire while officers fired tear gas.

The officer has been detained on suspicion of manslaughter, the prosecutor’s office in Nanterre said

Videos circulating on social media appearing to show zoo animals roaming the streets of Paris during protests have been confirmed as old and unrelated.

Newschecker investigated two videos on social media which claimed that protestors had released animals from a zoo in Paris.

However, both videos were traced back to 2020.

“I lost a child of 17-year-old, they took my baby,” the mother said in a TikTok video.

The riots amount to the worst crisis for Macron since the “Yellow Vest” protests over fuel prices gripped much of France in late 2018.

In mid-April, Macron gave himself 100 days to bring reconciliation and unity to a divided country after rolling strikes and sometimes-violent protests over his raising of the retirement age, which he had promised in his election campaign.

Macron postponed a state visit to Germany to deal with the crisis and had to leave an EU summit early. He is due to meet the leaders of parliament on Monday and more than 220 mayors of towns and cities that have been affected by riots on Tuesday.

Vincent Jeanbrun, the mayor of the Paris suburb of L’Hay-les-Roses, whose home was attacked while his wife and children were asleep inside on Saturday, on Monday described the situation as “a real nightmare”.

“We have been going through a state of siege”, Jeanbrun, a member of the centre-right Les Republicains party, told BFM TV on Monday.

“I have myself grown up in L’Hay-les-Roses in these large housing blocks”, he said. “We were modest, we didn’t have much, but we wanted to overcome it, we had hope that we would make it with hard work.”

In Nanterre, in the west of Paris, flowers and other tributes mark the spot where Nahel was shot almost a week ago. Graffiti calls for revenge and criticises the police.

And while tensions were still high, some residents said the material damage to vehicle and businesses should stop.

Forty-nine-year-old Josie Oranger said people who worked hard or borrowed to buy themselves a car or set up a business were being disadvantaged.

“All it takes is one night of trouble, and they’ve lost everything. It’s not their fault, everything that happened.”

The police officer involved has acknowledged firing a lethal shot, the state prosecutor says, telling investigators he wanted to prevent a dangerous police chase. His lawyer Laurent-Franck Lienard has said he did not intend to kill the teenager.

Unrest across France sparked by the police shooting of a 17-year-old appeared to slow overnight after six nights.

In all, according to the Interior Ministry, there were 157 arrests overnight, down from a peak of 3,880 arrests during the fiery night of June 30, and two law enforcement stations were attacked, among other damage.

Around 45,000 officers were deployed nationwide to counter violence fuelled by anger over discrimination against people who trace their roots to former French colonies and live in low-income neighborhoods. Nahel, the teenager killed last Tuesday, was of Algerian descent and was shot in the Paris suburb of Nanterre.

Across France, 297 vehicles were torched overnight along with 34 buildings.

The mother of a 17-year-old who was fatally shot by a French police officer in a Paris suburb has shared the last words she exchanged with her son before he died.

Footage taken by activist Assa Traore shows the mother of the teenager, who has been named as Nahel, describing how she told her “baby” to “be careful” the morning of the day he was shot.

“They took away my baby, he was still a child, he needed his mother,” she said.