20.08.2014 Lynching in Paris: case remains unresolved

The lynching of a seventeen-year-old Rrom in the suburbs of Paris remains unresolved. Although the victim of the vigilante justice, who was beaten nearly to death, has in the meantime come out of the coma, he can only remember few details of the incident, because he was unconscious for extensive parts of it. Even though there will be a confrontation with the potential suspects in which Darius is supposed to identify them, as an informant of the newspaper Libération states, there is little hope that the case will ever be solved. Although Darius (the young Rrom) insists that he did not commit a burglary on the day in question, the evidence suggests he did not always act within the bounds of legality either. It is stated that both sides have no interest for the case to be resolved: “Undoubtedly, Darius is the victim of an attempted murder, but he has also been accused of things. The perpetrators of this private revenge will admit to nothing. The Roma are also not totally innocent. If one presents the suspects to the Roma to identify them, I do not believe that they will help us. From both sides, no one has an interest that the matter comes out” (Tourancheau/Le Devin 2014). However, this can be seen differently. The informant not only assumes that Darius, but also other residents of the now abandoned, informal settlement in the Cité des Poètes were involved in illegal actions. Whether these allegations are based upon physical evidence is not clear. Furthermore, it is problematic to put theft on the same level as attempted homicide. Anyhow, the incident around Darius has shown that the social policy in the suburbs of Paris is still strongly deficient, so that crimes are not solved with the involvement of the police but with vigilante justice.