Two officers acquitted of failing to help boys who died in electricity substation in 2005, prompting fears of renewed unrest in France

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

A court has cleared two French police officers of failing to help a group of teenagers who ran into an electricity substation, where two died, leading to weeks of rioting across France in 2005.

The judge threw out the charge of failing to assist someone in danger by not raising the alarm or warning the emergency services after three boys ran into the power transformer, where two of them were electrocuted.

The lawyer for the families of Bouna Traoré, 15, and Zyed Benna, 17, described Monday’s decision as shocking and accused the court of “judicial apartheid”.

A third boy, Muhittin Altun, 17, was seriously injured and suffered 10% burns. The deaths triggered the worst rioting in France for 40 years and forced the government to declare a state of emergency. There are fears that the verdict may provoke renewed unrest.

The public prosecutor had asked for the officers, Sébastien Gaillemin and Stéphanie Klein, to be cleared.

The incident occurred during the October half-term holidays. Zyed, Bouna and Muhittin were walking home after a football match when they crossed paths with a police van on its way to a building site in Clichy-sous-Bois, one of Paris’s troubled suburbs.

An inquiry found they had committed no crime, but had instinctively begun to flee when they saw the police. The officers, seeing them run, wrongly concluded they had done something wrong and gave chase.

Lawyers for the teenagers’ families said it was an “absurdity” that the boys ran because of the police and that the officers chased because the youths were running.

Stéphane Gaillemin, a local police officer who was not one of those pursuing the boys, reported seeing two silhouettes climb over a grill at the edge of a local cemetery. The youths then entered a small wooded area before climbing over the door of the EDF transformer site, ignoring warning signs. As they hid, Bouna and Zyed were killed by a charge of tens of thousands of volts.

Gaillemin said into his police radio at the time: “If they’ve gone into the EDF site, I don’t give them much chance.”

Klein, a trainee police officer who was in the communications room and heard her colleague’s remark, was accused of not having reacted to alert either EDF or the emergency services.

Gaillemin told investigators he verified the substation twice, saw nobody in it before leaving and said he was certain the youngsters were not there.

The assistant public prosecutor, Delphine Dewailly, argued: “Given that he was not aware there was a danger, he cannot be criticised for not having acted to do something about it.”

The youngsters were electrocuted about 30 minutes after the police left the site.

The court judged that the two officers were not aware of the “certain and imminent” danger to the boys.