A man peacefully chatting during an authorized demonstration, hit in the face by a police grenade. The image was then circulated on social networks, symptomatic of the brutal police repression against the Yellow Vest movement . Five years later, the blinded victim can hope to obtain justice.
A police officer was sent before the Paris departmental criminal court on Thursday, October 24, for having blinded a Yellow Vest with a tear gas grenade launched by a “direct shot” during a demonstration on November 16, 2019 in the capital.
Police officer Fabrice T. will be tried for “intentional violence resulting in mutilation or permanent disability by a person in a position of public authority”, according to the indictment order signed Thursday and consulted by AFP on Friday.
He is accused of having “deliberately fired a shot that did not comply with the regulations in force, because it was clearly fired too low, below the minimum 30 degrees required”, i.e. a straight shot, the magistrate wrote.
The tear gas grenade “violently struck Manuel Coisne’s left eye, without him being able to avoid or anticipate it, causing the irreparable loss of his eye,” she continued.
“A direct shot had no place in this case, Manuel Coisne did not use any force against the police and was standing back from the violent demonstrators,” said the investigating judge.
The magistrate went against the prosecution, which had requested a dismissal, considering that “if the shot fired by Fabrice T. can be considered as a shot fired by the national gendarmerie, the ballistic expert and the manufacturer, it is consistent with the training received by the accused”.
“This decision is incomprehensible when the prosecution had made counter-arguments that were perfectly well-founded in law,” the police officer’s lawyer, Mr. Laurent-Franck Liénard, told AFP , announcing that he “obviously appealed this referral, which seems to respond to imperatives other than the strict application of the law.”
“Behind the front lines of the protesters”
Manuel Coisne, then aged 41, took part in an authorised Yellow Vest demonstration on 16 November 2019 at Place d’Italie in Paris, which turned violent before being cancelled by the police headquarters.
In a video that has gone viral, he is seen chatting away from the chaos with other protesters near the Italie 2 shopping centre. He is suddenly hit on the left side of his face by a tear gas grenade.
At the time of the impact, he was “about fifty metres from a CRS unit”, “behind the first lines of demonstrators” and was trying “with his partner to leave the Place d’Italie”, reports the investigating judge.
A forensic medical examination and another ballistic examination concluded that he had “permanently lost all vision in his left eye.”
“The criminal prosecution of this police officer who blinded Manu Coisne in the eye with a grenade is a relief,” Arié Alimi, the protester’s lawyer, told AFP.
“The Yellow Vests were wounded in their lives and in their flesh for having wanted to exercise their right to peaceful assembly and demonstration,” he continued, recalling that the events had occurred “on the day (of the first) anniversary of the Yellow Vests”, who began their demonstrations in the fall of 2018.
“The symbol is strong” on the eve of the tenth anniversary of the death of Rémi Fraisse, a 21-year-old botanist killed by a grenade during a demonstration on the Sivens dam construction site (Tarn), Mr. Alimi also stressed . “It is perhaps (the symbol) of the time of justice and truth.”
During the proceedings, the peace officer, currently aged 49, contested the facts alleged and “the conclusions of the legal expert who determined his shooting angle”, according to the order. But, confronted with the videos, he conceded “that his first shot (was) ‘missed’, almost tense, and on the second shot, he indicates that he aimed at the area where the rioters were, at the level of the shopping centre”.
He denied “being the author of Manuel Coisne’s injuries” while specifying that if the investigation demonstrated his involvement, “it could only be involuntary”.
Fabrice T. was indicted on March 30, 2023 and released.
This criminal trial would be among the first concerning violence committed by police officers during the Yellow Vest protests that began in the fall of 2018.
A trial was recently requested against a police officer suspected of having blinded one of the movement’s leading figures, Jérôme Rodrigues. This decision must be confirmed or overturned by an investigating judge.
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