The Paris prosecutor's office has said the police launched an internal probe into the killing of a 35-year-old Mauritanian man. Police brutality cases in France rarely make it to criminal court, even after high-profile killings that caused widespread national protests.

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The family of a Mauritanian man who died in custody last week has accused officers of killing him in the latest such allegation of police brutality.

The Paris prosecutor’s office said the police had launched an internal probe, but family said they want an independent investigating magistrate on the case.

A video filmed by neighbors, which has been shared on social media, shows 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,” their lawyer Yassine Bouzrou told Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Saturday. “Witnesses saw a pool of blood at the site of the arrest,” he said.

In 2024, a judge gave suspended jail sentences to three officers who inflicted irreversible rectal injuries to a Black man during a stop-and-search in 2017.