Teenager Loses Eye After Rioter Fire At French School

Grainy video footage has terrified France. Mael, sixteen years old, sits on pavement before a large pool of blood. His right eye is gone. A police rubber bullet destroyed it during a violent protest outside Lycée Balzac in Tours. Tatiana lives next door. She remembers the boy moaning in pain while his eyebrow swelled. He said his eye stung. Neighbors tried to mop him up with tissues. This happened ten days ago. It was just one of hundreds of protests gripping France recently.

Rioters started fires after Mael collapsed. Today, black spray-painted graffiti covers the school walls. The message reads 'Justice pour Mael!' Doors are locked. We visited this week and saw scorched side gates on Rue Pinaigrier. Sixteen-year-olds Marence Gendre and Camille Bardon told us the truth. They said infiltrators torched their school. These men wore masks and mobilized followers on Snapchat. Students watched them appear out of nowhere among them. They believe this violence provoked police to attack with rubber bullets.

Protesters throw stones at riot police during clashes in Lyon. Officers tackle demonstrators in Paris. Huge crowds gathered at Place de la Bastille on Thursday afternoon. One fact stands clear. France faces a modern insurrection threatening to run wild. On Tuesday, the Interior Ministry claimed urban violence brought 266,000 protesters onto streets nationwide. Fifty-six thousand were in Paris alone. Since late September riots began, they have engulfed the nation. The unrest moved from classrooms into universities and now workplaces.

The Ministry of National Education reported that 891 high schools face disruption or blockade. This is nearly a quarter of all lycées in France. Experts think the total number of affected schools reaches as high as 1,800. Up to 500 were closed by authorities. Nearly 800 gendarmes and 85 teachers suffered injuries. Six thousand five hundred protesters face arrest. As of last night, eighteen investigations look into excessive police force. Interior Minister Laurent Nunez ordered police to stop using a new stun grenade type. A fifteen-year-old pupil lost his hand in Lens, northern France, during a protest. These chaotic scenes unfold against a febrile political backdrop.

Emmanuel Macron is holding on to power as a lame-duck liberal president. A presidential election looms for April, with Right-wing populist Marine Le Pen of the National Rally party predicted to take victory. Ms Le Pen seems to back claims made by far-Left agitators that infiltrated the recent unrest. The spark for these protests was supposedly overcrowded classrooms, crumbling buildings, and a shortage of teachers. Yet she insists France is witnessing 'organised riots' driven by far-Left 'professional activists' inspired by her presidential rival Jean-Luc Mélenchon, head of the ultra-Left movement La France Insoumise, or 'France Unbowed'.

Although he has condemned the violence, Mr Mélenchon, 75, thought it appropriate to march with rioters. He even accepted a kiss from at least one keffiyeh-clad teenager. After the Daily Mail was told by pupils from the Lycée Balzac, where Mael was shot, of mysterious figures at its student protest, we spoke to a local journalist who has covered ten school riots in Tours. This city is run by a socialist and green coalition.

This week the Ministry of National Education reported that 891 high schools – nearly a quarter of all the lycées in France – have been disrupted or blockaded. Pictured: Protests at the Place de la Bastille in Paris. The total number of affected schools is thought to be as high as 1,800. Additionally, up to 500 were closed by authorities. Pictured: Protests at the Place de la Bastille in Paris.

This well-informed writer told us. Different groups are turning up. There are arsonists who deliberately start fires and anarchists who provoke chaos, even throwing bottles of acid. They all come under what France loosely calls 'the black block'. They are ultra-Leftists who move from riot to riot, dress entirely in dark clothing, cover their faces, and march at the front, antagonising the police.

We have delved further into the 'black block' and found it has links to Révolution Permanente (RP), a four-year-old Trotskyist party established to 'overthrow the French bourgeois state'. Its spokespeople include a lawyer who is advising injured student protesters. It boasts a thriving youth wing, Le Poing Levé, or as 'The Raised Fist' – a symbol of Leftist solidarity.

Political researchers in London and Paris told the Daily Mail this week. There is now substantial publicly available evidence that organisations of the French revolutionary Left are actively trying to extend, organise and radicalise the current lycée protest. They connect it with universities and workers before turning it into a broader political and industrial movement. One explained that the 'revolutionary Left have intervened deliberately and actively in the protests'. This view highlights an intelligence note from police in Paris dated September 28 – two days before Mael was partially blinded in Tours.

This note recorded that 'outside political activists' appeared at the first lycée protests, which took place in the capital's northern suburb of Saint-Denis. This is an impoverished and highly diverse area where large numbers of residents have immigrant backgrounds. Here, students who had complained of being forced into 'more hours of lessons than sleep' used flaming wheelie bins to block school entrances. Police have pointed out that student demonstrations here began peacefully. They turned volatile after fires were mysteriously started in the streets, and dangerous projectiles including petrol bombs were thrown at officers.

It was here, in Paris's troubled Saint-Denis suburb, that Ritchy Thibault, 23, activist and former parliamentary aide to Mr Mélenchon's La France Insoumise, whipped up a student crowd nine days ago. He threatened to burn the Élysée, the president's official palace, and asserting: 'We are going to attack every police station in the country.

We are going to set the Élysée on fire.' The words hung heavy in the air before reality caught up with them. He was arrested immediately after. Now he sits under judicial supervision and faces a strict ban from attending any demonstrations. Yet as France continues to burn, the Left shows no sign of giving up its revolution. 'I am not calling for calm at all – I am calling for people to continue to revolt,' Alexis of Le Poing Levé declared this week. He demanded underground planning and links with workers right now. The organisation has refused a government invitation to meet the education minister, which it claimed was an attempt to kill our movement entirely. This week, Le Poing Levé called for a black week of blockades to be carried out beyond the education system. Meanwhile, Anasse Kazib, a leading light in the group, published an impassioned tract arguing that the lycée revolt should now move to a general strike.

The influential French newspaper Le Monde has reported that at a quarter past seven on 27 protests monitored in 12 towns or cities, intelligence services identified trade unionists, Leftist politicians, and outsiders among the throng. This, says the Government, is evidence of the far Left's influence in the rising unrest now sweeping the country. This week, the chaos reached the Place de la Bastille in Paris, where protesters hurled roof tiles down on the heads of officers with riot shields. The tragic spate of injuries emerging among ordinary students has coincided with a declaration by the far-Left mayor of Saint-Denis, Bally Bagayoko – a French citizen of Malian origin who attended some protests and collapsed when police sprayed tear gas in his face. He claimed provocatively that violence can become legitimate at a certain point.

Furthermore, Le Parisien newspaper has reported that some Left-wing influencers told their Snapchat followers to bring knives and stab civilians in the crowd at a protest in Strasbourg. Similar scenes of horrific violence were repeated in other southern French cities, including Marseille, Lyon and Bordeaux. In other regions, a 17-year-old Bulgarian student claims he was nearly drowned in an attempted murder by police during lycée unrest in Belfort, eastern France. He insists he was chased into a river by a plain-clothes officer who held his head under water. The circumstances of this incident are being investigated as it emerged that the officer allegedly only freed the Bulgarian student after another youth attacked him, striking him with his fist and knocking him to the ground.

In Nantes, western France, a wing of one smart modern lycee built for £70million in 2014 was burned to a shell. Nearer Paris, in Pontoise, a 14-year-old schoolboy called Eden was maimed in the face during the riots after being struck by a police grenade. This left his jaw shattered and teeth broken at a sixth form college called Château d'Epluches. He just stepped outside his classroom out of curiosity to look at what was going on, said a fellow pupil who insisted that the youngster was not a violent person. A teacher at the scene gave a similar account to both the Daily Mail and local newspapers. She said that Eden was filming the protest with his mobile phone when a police officer hit him with a baton. Eden retaliated, and another officer fired a Cougar tear-gas grenade launcher into his face at almost point-blank range.

Eden's mother has sought help from Révolution Permanente and after receiving legal advice intends to complain formally to the police. She said her son's mouth is wrecked, all his upper teeth are broken. As for the bottom ones, we don't know what is left. He is in hospital, his jaw wired shut and facing several more operations. There is just enough space to pass a straw through the wire, and he can only feed on liquids.

He is having panic attacks." That is the state of Eden, according to his own words. His lawyer, Elsa Marcel, 33, speaks loudly for him. She holds dual American and French citizenship and serves as an official spokeswoman for Révolution Permanente while also acting as a Paris municipal councillor. She urges workers to back school blockades, praising those in the port city of Le Havre who have already joined the cause. Ms Marcel is a self-declared Trotskyist demanding that the state seize thousands of vacant private houses for low-income and homeless people.

She refused to speak to the Daily Mail but issued a statement declaring that Eden's injuries illustrated the 'extreme gravity' of police violence at the riots. Nearly 800 gendarmes and 85 teachers have been injured. Six thousand five hundred protesters were arrested. As of last night, eighteen investigations are under way into excessive use of force by police. The image captured shows protests at the Place de la Bastille in Paris.

When we visited Château d'Epluches, where Eden was so horrifically injured, students told us that their original campaign for better classroom conditions had morphed into a crusade of anger and hatred against the police. For far-Left revolutionaries, Mael's life-changing eye injury is the result of uncontained brutality by a police force running out of control. To some conservatives, he is a young fool who took a huge risk by reportedly skipping lessons at his own school to attend a riot two miles away.

Two days later, in a bitter irony, Mael's own sprawling sixth form college across town was also torched during horrendous scenes recorded on social media. These clips show masked protesters in black using tree branches to break large windows and running with flaming wheelie bins at the gates. The metalwork has been left twisted and charred. And then we have Mael's parents, who say their 'blameless' son was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. "He has no involvement, direct or indirect, in any form of political activism," they said. "He is simply a teenager who found himself caught in tragic events which ended in him being physically harmed."

That is not how everyone near the Lycée Balzac, in this idyllic part of France, sees it. Outside the school at 7am last Wednesday, we looked at the damage inflicted on the handsome nineteenth century building. As we did so, a man living next to the school came past walking his dog. He wanted to have his say when he realized we were journalists. "Among the students who were protesting when this boy was hurt were some very violent thugs," he explained.

"We have never had problems with the pupils, who seem polite." This was different. It looked like a mob was there who deliberately wanted to make the police angry. Then, without me asking, he volunteered the information that he was looking forward to next year's presidential elections. "I will be voting for Madame Le Pen," he stated. "A lot of the residents in Tours were in two minds before this school rioting across our city." Now we are certain we are going to support her.