Roma teenager in coma after lynching in France

It emerged on Tuesday that a Roma teenager is in a coma, after being attacked and dumped in a supermarket trolley just outside Paris.

A Roma camp in Lille Reuters/Pascal Rossignol

Police say the fifteen year old was found unconscious in the town of Pierrefitte-sur-Seine, north of the capital, on Friday.

He had been lynched by residents of a rundown high rise estate, who accused him of the burglary of a woman’s flat a few hours earlier.

The teenager lived with his family and other Roma in a squalid camp which had sprung up around an abandoned house.

"A group of several people came to find him and take him away by force," said a police source speaking on condition of anonymity, adding that the boy was then locked in a basement where he was violently beaten up.

Another source close to the case said about "a dozen people" took part in the attack. It was the boy's mother who alerted police that her son had been kidnapped.

A judicial source, also requesting anonymity, said the boy's "life is in danger. He is in a coma."

Michel Fourcade, the mayor of Pierrefitte-sur-Seine, the town where the attack took place, said the boy had been questioned by police several times this month in connection with a string of robberies in the area.

On Monday the camp lay abandoned after the Roma's rapid departure following the attack on the teenager.

The head of the district council, Stephane Troussel, condemned a "heinous attack in the guise of vengeance."

"The French republic owes protection to everyone, no matter where they live and what their origin", he said.

SOS Racism said the attack was the "obvious result of nauseating tensions faced by our fellow citizens."

Minority rights associations say violence towards Roma people is on the increase.
Illegal camps on the fringes of towns and cities are frequently a subject of controversy in France.

In October in Marseille, Roma families were forced to leave a makeshift camp after threats from local people, many of whom were of north African origin. They then burned down the camp when the Roma had left.

In May 2013, Roma families who were living in a designated hardstand were attacked in Hellemmes in northern France.

France has previously faced EU criticism over its treatment of the Roma minority, and a record 19,380 roma were evicted by police from illegal camps in 2013, though many are thought to have returned.

Successive governments on both left and right of the political spectrum have struggled with the issue, while town mayors have limited power to deal with illegal encampments and the anger they often create among nearby settled communities.