Posted on 05/31/2006 12:44:39 AM PDT by Eurotwit
MONTFERMEIL, France (AFP) - Rioters hurling rocks clashed with police in the rough suburbs of Paris for a second night running as authorities arrested a youth whose injury -- along with the death of two friends -- last year sparked a wave of brutal rioting.
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Muhittin Altun, who survived an electrocution in October when he hid out from police in a power sub-station, was detained late Tuesday in Clichy-sous-Bois, a poor neighbourhood northeast of Paris that was the epicentre of last year's violence.
Police said the 18-year-old had been pitching rocks at a police car. His lawyer denied the charge.
Altun was alleged to have joined in the fresh wave of rioting as it spread from nearby Montfermeil, where gangs attacked a police station, set ablaze cars and rained stones down on public buildings.
Police said four officers were wounded in the clashes, three of them trying to protect the Montfermeil police station from a hail of missiles. Five youths were arrested.
Four other officers, visibly rattled, managed to get out of their car, in front of the Bosquets public housing estate on the border of the two towns, just before the youths set it on fire, AFP witnessed.
A day earlier seven officers were reported injured and three youths arrested.
Following the first outbreak of clashes late Monday, when Montfermeil's town hall and mayor's home were attacked and a gang of 100 masked youths patrolled the suburb, a 250-man contingent was dispatched to quell the unrest.
Through the night Tuesday, a helicopter with a spotlight canvassed the neighbourhood, seeking new flare-ups.
Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, the powerful politician known for his law-and-order rhetoric, pledged late Tuesady he would clamp down on any further violence. "I won't let chaos be stirred up anywhere in France", he said.
French authorities have ordered the immediate scale-up of security, fearing a repeat of the unrest that plunged the country into the worst violence in four decades and unleashed a social crisis of dramatic proportions.
The unrest was initially sparked by the electrocution on October 27 of Altun and friends Bouna Traore, a 15-year-old of Malian background, and Zyed Benna, a 17-year-old of Tunisian origin, who both died.
Youths in the suburb, after learning of the deaths, went on a rampage that spread around most of France's big cities and towns and prompted the government to declare a state of emergency.
The riots quickly snowballed in high-immigrant districts, fuelled by local youth anger at racial discrimination, a lack of educational and employment prospects and police harassment.
After three weeks of unrest across the country, the final toll rose to 10,000 vehicles torched and more than 3,200 people arrested.
One of Altun's lawyers protested his arrest earlier Wednesday, dismissing police claims he had participated in the fresh rioting.
"Muhittin Altun is being held on pathetic charges -- throwing a rock -- which he vehemently denies," Jean-Pierre Mignard told AFP.
"He was arrested in front of his home. We are stupefied that his arrest is taking place a day before a critical judicial proceeding," he said, referring to a visit he was to make Wednesday alongside investigating magistrates to the sub-station where he had suffered burns.
The left-wing municipal authorities in Montfermeil blamed the flare-up in violence this week on the "heavy-handed" arrest of a woman from the Bosquets estate whose son was wanted in connection with a robbery.
Prosecutors confirmed that incidents broke out between youths and police after a woman and her son were taken into custody on Monday.
Regional authorities of the Seine-Saint-Denis prefecture denied the events were linked to the November riots, describing them as "sporadic incidents which, unfortunately, regularly accompany the work of police officers."
Sarkozy, speaking to a group of policemen late Tuesday, said the violence in Montfermeil was not a spontaneous occurrence but a well-orchestrated strike.
"More than 100 troublemakers set upon you, masked and carrying weapons," he said. "It's impossible to deny the evidence: this was premeditated."
He also brushed aside criticism of the arrest of the woman and her son -- the incident thought to have set off the riots -- and said it showed only that "by battling delinquency, we have upset some of the delinquents."
Sarkozy is the favourite of the conservative camp for next year's presidential election.
Following last year's unrest, the centre-right government promised a string of measures to fight discrimination and improve access to education, jobs and housing for residents of the riot-hit areas.
Despite the government's action, however, more than four in five French people said in January they feared the riots could flare up again.
Non existent rioting and looting in New Orleans captivated the MSM for weeks.
France doesn't even have a hurricane to blame for the breakdown in law and order, and they get a pass.
And who said that snowballs don't stand a chance in Hell?
Can't compare rioting in western democracy to rioting in a Muslim hell hole.
Everybody knows that Muslims are so sex starved that they riot when a goat shows a little bit of ankle. /sarc
Okay, so that was a harsh joke. Realistically, if the riots in France could be blamed on Bush, it would be all over the news, day in and day out. The only reason they aren't is because the rioters aren't carrying anti-Bush signs. But give the MSM time to print up a few signs and start handing them out, and we'll have a regular dog and pony show.
One of these days the Europeans are going to wake up and grow a pair. It will be interesting to see what happens then.
But it doesn't look like it's going to happen anytime soon.
NTV the German news channel on satellite, has nothing on France (today France is not at home ) BUT lead story is of a bomb scare in San/p>Francisco
buy a gun, stop a riot.
Was this broadcast on any MSM news this morning?
Visibly rattled? They were waving white handerchiefs and filling their pants?
I think we need to lend the Frenchies a couple of hundred Chicago cops. This crap would stop fast.
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