On Friday 2 October 2026 at around 9:15 a.m., near the lycée Gustave-Courbet in Belfort, a plainclothes police officer had just arrested a young man, whom he had singled out from the crowd as far as a watercourse, because the latter was, according to the prosecutor, “suspected of having started a fire on the grassy area” (translated) near the lycée (franceinfo). The Interior Minister said the young person was “behind projectile throwing” (translated); a young witness interviewed by France 3 disputes this. According to the Belfort public prosecutor, cited by franceinfo, the officer is then chased by “a horde of particularly aggressive individuals” (translated): one of them makes him fall backwards, one individual punches him several times in the head, another kicks him in the skull. The scene was filmed and widely shared (franceinfo, Le JDD).
Police reinforcements disperse the group and come to the aid of the police officer, who was “hospitalised after losing consciousness” (translated) according to the Interior Minister; it is this element (loss of consciousness and hospitalisation) that underpins the seriousness retained. His condition “no longer gives cause for major concern” (translated) and, according to a police source cited by franceinfo on 3 October, he suffers from “superficial trauma” (translated). Orange writes on 4 October that he was able to leave hospital during the day on 2 October; according to ICI, the prosecutor indicates that the police officer was prescribed eight days of total incapacity for work.
Videos of the arrest, filmed just before and authenticated by the prosecutor (franceinfo), are the subject of a dispute over the conduct of the arrest; it is described in the linked case, this entry dealing only with the blows struck against the police officer.
Follow-up
On 2 October, the Belfort public prosecutor’s office opens an investigation for attempted intentional homicide (franceinfo). Several participants have been “formally identified” (translated); on the morning of 4 October, the prosecutor announces two new arrests and periods of police custody (franceinfo, updated). On 4 October, at a press conference, he announces the opening of a judicial investigation for intentional violence against a police officer targeting these two minor lycée pupils, as well as against persons unknown to identify the other participants (franceinfo, ICI). The older one, whom the police officer had tried to arrest in the stream, admitted in police custody to two kicks, to throwing stones at police officers the same day and to damage in the preceding days, the prosecutor says; he faces ten years in prison according to the prosecutor, who requested his pre-trial detention (ICI). The younger one admitted to having been in contact with the group and to having wanted to throw a kick while “deflecting it at the last second” (translated); the prosecutor says that analysis of the videos contradicts this version, and the public prosecutor’s office requests strict judicial supervision against him, with placement in a youth judicial protection facility outside the département (franceinfo, ICI). The judges’ decisions, unknown as of 4 October, are reported on 5 October (see below).
The charge was changed by the public prosecutor’s office: from attempted intentional homicide (2 October) to intentional violence against a police officer (judicial investigation of 4 October).
StreetPress reconstructed the sequence on 4 October. According to two teachers present, the blockade, at first “good-natured” (translated), had got out of hand in the preceding half hour: firecrackers thrown, an attempt to set a vehicle on fire (context reported by these teachers, with no link described to the arrest), then charges and tear gas grenades by the CRS. A few minutes after the arrest, several punches and at least five kicks are landed on the police officer’s head, two of them by the lycée pupil whom the police officer had arrested in the stream and who had run away, according to the prosecutor (admission in police custody, see above), who mentions “a very brief loss of consciousness” (translated) and a condition that “is not particularly serious” (translated).
On 5 October, macommune.info reports that the two minors, formally placed under investigation on Sunday 4 October at the end of their police custody, were subject to different decisions: the 17-year-old lycée pupil was placed in pre-trial detention, the 15-year-old under judicial supervision, including in particular a ban on taking part in a demonstration and on carrying a weapon. The prosecutor, for his part, had set aside the charge of attempted murder for lack of sufficiently probative evidence at this stage.
On 7 October, franceinfo (citing AFP) recalls that the 17-year-old lycée pupil, formally placed under investigation for “aggravated violence” (translated) against the police officer, is incarcerated and that his lawyer has appealed the placement in pre-trial detention; his complaint for “attempted murder” (translated) against the police officer is the subject of a separate investigation by the Vesoul public prosecutor’s office, entrusted to the IGPN (police internal affairs) (see the linked case).
On 8 October, three other minor lycée pupils, arrested on Wednesday 7, were brought before a judge then formally placed under investigation for “violence committed during a demonstration on the public highway against a national police officer, causing a total incapacity for work not exceeding eight days” (translated), aggravated by being in a group and by deliberately concealing the face (an offence punishable by ten years’ imprisonment), and placed under judicial supervision (curfew, ban on demonstrating and on carrying a weapon) in line with the public prosecutor’s office’s requests, according to the prosecutor cited by Actu17. According to this account, one admitted in police custody to three punches to the police officer on the ground, saying he did not know he was a police officer; another admitted a kick to the head; the third is suspected of having used a tear-gas spray picked up from the ground against the police officer (according to Actu17, the videos show the spray aimed at the then unconscious police officer), which he disputes: he says he pressed it “with no particular direction” (translated). Five teenagers are now formally placed under investigation, which is the number of suspects sought for having hit the police officer. The appeal against the first lycée pupil’s placement in pre-trial detention will be examined on 14 October by the investigating chamber of the Besançon court of appeal.
On 14 October, the investigating chamber of the Besançon court of appeal overturns the pre-trial detention order against the 17-year-old student, incarcerated for ten days, despite the requests of the prosecutor general’s office; he remains formally placed under investigation and is placed under strict judicial supervision: obligation to remain at his home from 7:30 p.m. to 7 a.m., ban on taking part in a demonstration, on expressing himself on social media and on contacting the four other minors formally placed under investigation (Actu17; ICI). The prosecutor general’s office says, in a statement cited by Actu17, that it does not intend to lodge an appeal against this decision. The five minors formally placed under investigation are now all under judicial supervision (Actu17, ICI). Before the court of appeal, the student’s lawyer says that “he should never have gone to prison” (translated) and accuses the Belfort prosecutor of having had his client jailed “to mask the scandal of this young person’s attempted drowning by a police officer” (translated) (see the linked case); the prosecutor, approached by ICI, did not wish to react. About 200 people, mostly lycée pupils, had gathered in front of the Besançon court in support of the student (ICI, Actu17).