April 22, 2000

France Shooting Triggers Rampage

By ELAINE GANLEY, Associated Press Writer

LILLE, France (AP) -- Riad Hamlaoui was almost one of the lucky ones.
He had finished high school, had no police record and was about to
start a job. That made the Algerian-born young man a role model in
Lille-Sud, a run-down suburb on the edge of this northern French city.

Now his death at the hands of a policeman has made him a symbol of the
poverty, hopelessness and racism that plague many of France's largely
immigrant suburbs.

Hamlaoui, 24, was shot to death last week by a police officer on a
canine squad while allegedly trying to steal a car.

The officer, not identified, has been placed under investigation for
homicide -- the first time in France since 1997 that a police officer
has become a suspect in such a death.

But that has not quelled the sorrow and outrage in Lille-Sud, where
Hamlaoui spent most of his life.

''For many of us, Riad was an example to follow,'' his sister Nouria
told a gathering Friday of more than 2,000 people who held a silent
march in his memory.

The shooting triggered a three-night rampage by youths who threw
stones and Molotov cocktails at police and burned scores of cars. Some
500 police were brought in to help the 30 who normally patrol
Lille-Sud, a suburb of some 23,000 residents, more than half of whom
are of Muslim North African origin.

Such bouts of violence between police and youths have become an
oft-repeated scenario in France. They occur in poor suburbs like
Lille-Sud, built after World War II to fill a housing deficit, and are
often triggered by what police insist are mistakes but end in injury
or death.

''As long as we haven't attacked the fundamental causes of the
problem, we can always fear the worst,'' Amar Lasfar, rector of the
main Lille-Sud Mosque, said in an interview. The mosque played a key
role in calming the violence.

''As long as police instill fear in youths there will be problems,''
Lasfar said.

Sabri, a 17-year-old, said police stopped him for an identity check
two weeks before Hamlaoui was shot, put a gun to his mouth and
disengaged the safety catch.

The policeman told him the bullets were rubber. ''His colleague took
out real bullets and said that for Lille-Sud you have to use the real
thing,'' said Sabri, who was then let go. Like others, he refused to
provide his full name for fear of police reprisals.

Sabri's story could not be confirmed, but people familiar with the
situation in Lille-Sud said such intimidation tactics are not
uncommon.

''They're cowboys,'' said Simon, a 24-year-old of Algerian origin from
nearby Roubaix.

''My father worked for 30 years in the textile factories, and what's
the thanks? Killing the children.''

Lille's majestic City Hall reigns over the troubled Nord-Pas de Calais
region. Mining, textile and metallurgy industries, once the region's
lifeblood employing immigrant labor, began folding at the end of the
1970s. Today, these industries are dead or in their last gasps.

The parents of today's youths took the hit. Unemployment in the region
is 16.2 percent. It is some 23 percent in Lille-Sud.

''Today, there is a loss of signposts, a loss of identity and a
feeling of rejection,'' said Jean-Claude Dulieu, secretary general of
the regional office of one of France's main anti-racism groups, the
Movement Against Racism and for Friendship Between Peoples, known as
MRAP. ''Youths today can't find their place.''

The problem is exacerbated by what groups like MRAP claim is blatant
racism by police.

Deputy Mayor of Lille Jean Raymond Degreve called it a police
''training problem.''

''Racism is not absent from police behavior,'' he said carefully, and
that ''makes for more excessive interventions.''

Each day since Hamlaoui's death, hundreds of people have paid tribute
with prayers and flowers at the shooting site, around the corner from
the victim's home.

Six days after the shooting, there was barely a police officer in
sight. Visibly proud youths wearing arm bands escorted the silent
march for Riad to Lille City Hall.

''We have no room for error,'' Lasfar, the imam, warned the crowd
before leaving the mosque, which organized the march.

Ahead of the march, some 2,500 boys, youths and men packed the
pristine mosque for Friday prayers.

Experts and observers say the ''permanent tension'' between police and
suburban youths engenders the violence.

Angelina Peralva, with the Center for Analysis and Sociological
Intervention, in Paris, which studies suburban violence, blames
politicians for abandoning the suburbs to a police ''security
treatment'' of issues whose origins are social and economic.

''The suburbs were once a remarkable phenomenon of social mixing ...
an incredible step ahead. Today, they have become ghettos,'' Peralva
said. ''You have all the ingredients for a daily confrontation with
police.

''Lille is the latest case,'' she said. ''There will be others.''