Several thousand people took to the streets of Paris on Sunday to protest the death in police custody of a Mauritanian immigrant worker, chanting slogans against “a police force that kills us,” according to an AFP journalist at the scene.

 

 

 

The protest followed the death of 35-year-old El Hacen Diarra and comes amid a series of cases in which activists have accused French police of racism and excessive use of force.

 

 

 

Demonstrators gathered at the shelter in northeast Paris where Diarra had been living and outside which he was violently arrested by police on the night of January 14. From there, protesters marched to the local police station, carrying banners reading “Justice” and “RIP.” Members of Diarra’s family also took part in the march.

 

 

Video footage filmed by neighbours and shared on social media shows a police officer punching what appears to be a man lying on the ground, while another officer stands nearby.

 

 

 

Diarra’s family has filed a legal complaint accusing security forces of “intentional violence that led to a death,” according to their lawyer, Yassine Bouzrou, who spoke to AFP last week. Paris police have since opened an internal investigation into the incident.

 

 

France’s Interior Minister, Laurent Nunez, on Sunday again rejected calls for the officers involved to be suspended pending the outcome of the investigation.

 

 

“The officer who, in the footage, throws two punches will have to explain himself,” Nunez told the Sunday edition of Le Parisien newspaper. “But nothing indicates, at this stage, what the causes of death are,” he added.

 

 

According to Diarra’s family, he had been drinking coffee outside the shelter when he encountered police officers and the situation escalated. Prosecutors, however, said police alleged they saw Diarra rolling a cannabis joint and attempted to arrest him after he refused a body search.

 

 

 

He was taken into custody on suspicion of resisting arrest, possessing “a brown substance resembling cannabis,” and having “forged administrative documents.”

 

 

 

Police said that while waiting on a bench at the station, Diarra was seen to pass out. Paramedics were called and attempted to revive him, but he was later pronounced dead.

 

 

At the protest, Diarra’s cousin, Diankou Sissoko, expressed doubts about the prospect of accountability. “I don’t believe at all that we will see justice, because even before El Hacen died there were other deaths and there has never been justice,” she told AFP.

 

 

She described Diarra as “kind, smiling” and “quiet,” disputing the police account that portrayed him as aggressive.

 

 

Allegations of police violence in France have increased in recent years, notably during the “yellow vest” protests between 2018 and 2019. Prosecutors have also called for a police officer to stand trial over the 2023 killing of a teenager during a traffic stop, a case that triggered nationwide protests.

 

 

A court is expected to rule in March on whether the officer will face a criminal trial over the killing of 17-year-old Nahel M. In 2024, a judge handed suspended prison sentences to three police officers who inflicted irreversible rectal injuries on a Black man during a stop-and-search in 2017.