Severe Injury caused by rubber bullets in Paris.

On Saturday night a young man in Clichy-sous-Bois (Seine-Saint-Denis) was hit in the eye by a rubber bullet fired by Police. He is currently in hospital, the doctors are currently unable to say if he will regain the sight in his eye.

Submitted by jef costello on November 1, 2006

Police were called after a barricade was erected in one of the roads leading to the fire station in Clichy. According to Police reports the four or five police cars were attcked by a group of over twenty youths throwing stones and they used rubber bullets to disperse the group. Jiade was arrested running away in a side street.

After his injury Jiade, 16, gave a statement to the IGS (The French equivalent of the PCC). The original statement taken by the IGS conflicts with the version of events Jiade gave to the newspaper Le Parisien and he is refusing to sign the statement. Jiade says that he was coming home with two friends on Saturday when they saw some plain-clothes police. As they had done nothng wrong they ignored them, one of these officers fired a rubber bullet at him, striking him in the eye. According to Jiade the officer was close to the minimum range of 7 metres and fired without warning. It is not disputed that Jiade was originally taken to the police station rather than to hospital. According to the Police Jiade admitted to having helped to build the barricade, but not to throwing stones.

Jiade's father angrily denied that his son had been involved "neither myself nor my son agreed to sign a statement. My son was barely conscious after an operation lasting several hours. My boy is a calm young man. He even helped with the security at the march in Clichy on Friday."

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