At the immediate appearances of the Bobigny court, “the Stade de France affair is a miserable story of pickpocketing” – Le Monde

Police officers guard the entrances to the Stade de France before the football match between Liverpool and Real Madrid, in Saint-Denis, May 28, 2022. CHRISTOPHE ENA / AP And there were only six left. Of the hundred arrests announced after the chaos around the Stade de France, Saturday May 28, the 48 police custody counted Monday morning, the “hordes of thugs from the housing estates” pointed out… There remain these six men aged 21 to 39, who parade Tuesday, May 31 in immediate appearance before the criminal court of Bobigny, for theft of telephones, a watch or even a necklace snatched from the outskirts of the Stade de France. “All the other police custody have been lifted,” said the prosecution. Osama K. is the first to be condemned during this overloaded hearing afternoon. Yellow mask under his chin, curly hair, he recounts this evening during which he tried to enter the stadium, without a ticket, to attend the Champions League final. Once, twice, three times. Without success. And leaving after the match, on the crowded platforms of line 13 of the metro, there he is who puts his hand in the pocket of an English supporter. He will be arrested a few seconds later, after throwing the Englishman’s phone to the ground. Oussama K. is 24 years old and lives between a tent under a bridge and a sublet room from time to time, when his UberEats deliveries save him a few warm days. He is paperless, so to be able to work, he again sublets an account on the platform for 100 euros per month. “The exceptional advantages of the start-up nation”, slips his lawyer, Loïc Le Quellec. His client, who cannot read or write, recently traded in his scooter for a bicycle and some cash. Each month, he sends a hundred euros to his mother and his four brothers and sisters, who remained in Algeria. Read also: Article reserved for our subscribers Incidents at the Stade de France: “The problem is that the police perceive any crowd gathered as a homogeneous group” A little over a year ago, Oussama K. arrived in France by boat, because he loved Paris, he imagined finding a job and his family ate only one meal a day in Algeria. The translator translates his plea into Arabic: “Give me any punishment, but not prison. He promises to “leave France”, that we won’t catch him doing that. His record was empty until then. “Anyway, you are going to leave France because you are obliged”, loose the president of the court, pronouncing four letters recently added to her file by the prefecture: “OQTF”, for obligation to leave French territory. A case with an “international dimension” The prosecutor stands up to discuss a “disturbance to public order which goes beyond the framework of the hearing”, the “particular context” and the “international dimension” of the case. She requires ten months in prison with a warrant. The room holds its breath. Ten months closed with immediate departure in prison for a phone theft by a first offender, the defense lawyer is amazed. But since it is necessary to speak of the “context”, Me Le Quellec does not need to be asked: “Can we, in this case, take into account in the context the declarations of the Ministry of the Interior: it would be so first the fault of the English supporters and then the fault of those? Maybe the story could be a bit more nuanced? You have 46.3% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.