Police detain 4, including 2 minors, in early morning raid in France following urban unrest

Police detain 4 in France following urban unrest

PARIS — Four men, including two minors, were detained in a morning raid Wednesday in the southeastern French city of Grenoble, the site of recent clashes between police and local youth, a police official said.

The unrest in Grenoble has had far-reaching political fallout, with conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy calling for naturalized French citizens who threaten the lives of police to be stripped of their nationality.

Officers conducting Wednesday’s raid were trying to identify the accomplice of Karim Boudouda, a resident of Grenoble’s Villeneuve neighborhood who was shot dead by police following an armed robbery at a nearby casino, a police official said. The official was not authorized to be publicly named according to police policy.

Boudouda’s death touched off several nights of unrest in the neighborhood last month, with dozens of cars torched and an annex of the City Hall burned. Police said they were shot at, though no one was injured in the rioting.

Wednesday’s raid came a day ahead of a visit to Grenoble by Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux.

Sarkozy’s proposal on revoking citizenship sparked heated criticism from left-wing opposition parties. The immigration minister, however, wants to go even further and bring before Parliament a bill that would allow naturalized citizens to be stripped of their nationality for a raft of serious crimes.

Separately Wednesday, Sarkozy’s office said in a statement that the French leader has commissioned a report on preventing juvenile delinquency. The report to be compiled the justice minister is due by late October.

Sarkozy has long had a tense relationship with youth in the heavily immigrant suburbs, which exploded in nationwide riots in 2005.