Sarkozy deals with crisis over youths

After returning from a state visit to China, French President Nicolas Sarkozy immediately immersed himself Wednesday in the crisis unfolding over the last few days in the Paris suburbs where young people have been rioting in the wake of the deaths of two teens. The young men died Sunday after their motorbike collided with a police car in Villiers-le-Bel.

Sarkozy showed up before 8 a.m. at the hospital bedside of a police captain who was seriously injured in the violence; the president then went back to Paris to visit officers and a fireman in a hospital there. Since the unrest began Sunday night, 130 officers had been hurt.

Sarkozy later met with 11 members of the teenage victims’ families around a large conference table in the “Green Room” next to the president’s office in the Elysee Palace, according to a palace spokeswoman. They were together for 45 minutes, speaking at times through an interpreter, she said. The victims’ families are immigrants from Morocco and Senegal. The teens’ bodies are to be returned to their respective African countries for burial, according to the news agency Agence France-Presse.

On Tuesday, reports had circulated that the families had declined Sarkozy’s invitation to come to the Elysee. But those reports turned out to be incorrect.

During their get-together, the president told the families that he was opening a judicial inquiry of the teens’ deaths, the families’ lawyer, Jean-Pierre Mignard, said. Mignard later described this step as a “gesture that is just and aims to calm the situation, one we would like, in the name of all the families, to be understood everywhere,” according to AFP.

After the families departed, Sarkozy sat again at a conference table -- this time with his top ministers -- to discuss the inquiry and security in the troubled neighborhoods. On the first night of confrontations, the young people threw rocks and Molotov cocktails at the police, who retaliated mostly with tear gas. The exchanges became more dangerous on the second night, when rioters used long-barreled guns and fired on at least two dozen officers.

Those who shot officers, the president insisted to reporters outside the hospital, “will find themselves in a criminal court. That has a name -- it is an assassination attempt.”

The area in and around Villiers-le-Bel, about 11 miles north of Paris, was saturated with as many as 1,000 police officers Tuesday night as the government increased efforts to restore calm. The heavy police presence, for the most part, stemmed the violence, and predictions were that the area would remain orderly over Wednesday night, news wires reported.

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geraldine.baum@latimes.com