France celebrates this Friday its National Holiday in the midst of an unusual security deployment, before the fear of further unrest like those that shook the country two weeks ago after the death of Nahel, the 17-year-old boy who was shot by an officer at a police checkpoint in Nanterre, in the parisian periphery.
So that the scenes of violence of the first days of July are not repeated (looting, fires, attacks on public buildings…) the most conflictive cities are going to be ‘armored’, especially Paris. The Government has decided not to cancel the planned celebrations, although some towns have decided to suspend them, as a precaution. From Thursday to Saturday there will be deployed 130,000 agents, including police, gendarmes and firefighters: 10,000 in Paris. 45,000 agents every day and about 40,000 firefighters.
They are teams “equipped and organized against urban violence.” In addition to the deployment of personnel, there will be helicopters, armored vehicles, and the elite brigades of law enforcement (under the acronym RAID, GIGN, BRI) will participate, which are the ones involved in anti-terrorist deployments or hostage-taking, for example. . They also participated in the riots two weeks ago.
July 14 is usually a troubled day. He last yearbetween July 13 and 14 there were 800 detaineesmore than 700 vehicles were burned and there were riots in Paris, Marseilles, Nantes, Lyon y Dijon. “This year the July 14 party comes in a particular context, after the extreme violence that we experienced last week,” said the Minister of the Interior, Gerald Darmaninat the press conference to present the device.
Transport, buses and trams, will stop providing service from 10:00 p.m. in large cities to prevent them from being set on fire. In the Paris region, dozens of popular neighborhoods have decided to suspend the festivities, among them is Nanterre, the town where he was from Nahelthe young man killed by the police shot a few weeks ago.