Participants chant slogans, wave flags and show placards and banners as they take part in a march in tribute to 35-year-old El Hacen Diarra, who died in police custody at the police station of Paris’s 20th arrondissement, in Paris on January 25, 2026. BLANCA CRUZ / AFP
Several thousand people protested in Paris Sunday, January 25, over the death in custody of a Mauritanian immigrant worker, yelling slogans against police. The demonstration gathered at the shelter in the northeast of the capital where the man, El Hacen Diarra, 35, had been living and in front of which he was violently arrested by police on the night of January 14. Video filmed by neighbors, shared on social media, showed a policeman punching what appears to be a man on the ground as another officer stands by and watches.
The family has filed a legal complaint accusing security forces of “intentional violence that led to a death.” Paris police have launched an internal investigation into what happened. The protesters, gathered to support Diarra’s family, members of whom also took part, unfurled banners reading “Justice” and “RIP,” before marching to the local police station.
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France’s Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez on Sunday again rejected calls for the officers concerned to be suspended until there is clear evidence they did something wrong. “The officer who, in the footage, throws two punches will have to explain himself,” he told Le Parisien newspaper. “But nothing indicates, at this stage, what the causes of death are,” he added.
‘Kind, smiling’ man
According to the family, Diarra had been drinking a coffee outside the shelter when he encountered police officers and the situation deteriorated. Prosecutors say police alleged they had seen Diarra roll a cannabis joint and proceeded to arrest him when he refused a body search.
He was taken into custody for allegedly resisting arrest and allegedly possessing “a brown substance resembling cannabis” and “forged administrative documents.” While waiting on a bench at the police station, officers said Diarra was seen to pass out and paramedics were called who tried to revive him, but he was pronounced dead.
At the protest, Diarra’s cousin, Diankou Sissoko, told AFP: “I don’t believe at all that we will see justice, because even before El Hacen died there were other deaths and there has never been justice.” She described Diarra as “kind, smiling” and “quiet”, nothing like the police account that described him as aggressive.