Two French police officers were on Monday cleared of failing to help two teenagers whose deaths in a Paris suburb sparked three weeks of riots in the country’s troubled “banlieues”.
The verdict in Rennes, western France, came after both the public prosecutor and the defence called for them to be let off.
Some have expressed concerns an acquittal for the pair might spark violent protests like those seen recently in America.
Sebastien Gaillemin, 41, and Stephanie Klein, 38, were acquitted of “non-assistance to individuals in danger” by failing to raise the alarm after the two Muslim youths - Bouna Traore, 15, and Zyed Benna, 17 - took cover in an electricity substation after a police chase in Clichy-sous-Bois, northeast of Paris.
A third boy, Muhittin Altun, now 27, survived the 20,000-volt electric shock with severe burns.
After the verdict, family members expressed their anger at the result.
“Shame on justice. There is no justice on this Earth”, said Ziyed’s brother, Adel Benna. “I am disgusted, disappointed. The police are untouchable. They are never convicted.”
Samir Mihi, from Clichy-sous-Bois residents’ association Au-delà des Mots, said: “I heard earlier someone say: ‘Zyed and Bouna died for nothing.’ I sincerely hope not. But we will have to break yet more bad news for our suburb.”
However, he angrily denied the verdict would spark the kind of violence seen after the teenagers’ deaths in 2005.
“Nothing will happen in Clichy-sous-Bois. Stop taking our district hostage and claiming that there will be rioting. I invite you to come to Clichy-sous-Bois outside such circumstances and you’ll see we live pretty well.”
The police officers’ lawyer, Daniel Merchet, said: “My clients were intimately convinced that they had commited no fault, no error, no crime. For them it is the end of their torment, a page in their life that is turning, they are relieved.”
The trial had hinged on a sentence uttered by Mr Gaillemin on police radio during the chase in which he can be heard saying if they had climbed into the EDF substation, “Je ne donne pas cher de leur peau” (‘I wouldn’t bank on them coming out alive’).
A tearful Mr Gaillemin had told the court that he had checked twice to see whether the teenagers were still in the substation and only left once he was satisfied this was not the case.
“As he was not aware of the danger, he cannot be blamed for not acting to deal with it,” said prosecutor Delphine Dewailly. “You don’t ease the pain of one drama by adding another injustice,” she told the court.
Judge Nicolas Leger ruled that Ms Klein, an inexperienced intern working as the police station operator, was unaware of the existence of the substation. Earlier he said the court was “well aware of the particular suffering” of the families, but that this is neither “a trial of the national police” nor of the “riots that shook France”.
Nevertheless, it underlined the sense of alienation still rife in many of France’s suburbs, which Manuel Valls, the prime minister, earlier this year dubbed a form of “territorial, social and ethnic apartheid”.
Many complain of a two-speed justice system given the 10-year wait for a verdict.
Jean-Pierre Mignard, lawyer for the civil plaintiffs, called the verdict “shocking”, saying: “There is nothing in this verdict, not a single line or word that takes into account the arguments of the civil plaintiffs.”
“The prime minister recently spoke about the existence of a social apartheid in France’s banlieues (suburbs). Today, one gets the impression of a judicial apartheid.”
The trauma of the 2005 riots is still felt in France, shocked by scenes of nightly riots in which thousands of vehicles were torched, public buildings were burned and thousands of people were arrested. The government declared a state of emergency imposed curfews before a precarious calm finally returned.