Liege pupils smash shopfronts as the prosecutor warns of zero tolerance

Pupils marching in Liege on Tuesday smashed shopfronts and set a bin on fire after a day of school protests, RTL reported from the city centre. A McDonald's was vandalised and a Quick was damaged. Traffic in the centre was badly disrupted. The march left Place Saint-Lambert, passed secondary schools, and later split toward the Guillemins station, the Fragnée bridge and back to Saint-Lambert. Galleries Saint-Lambert and several shops closed their doors.

In front of the Athenee royal de Liege 1, RTL's reporter saw a group break several windows and set a rubbish bin alight before helmeted police and a fire appliance arrived. Le Soir described arrests, clashes with police, vandalised shops and destroyed bus shelters from the same day of student protest. French lycee protests have been running for days over school policy. Wallonia's version turned physical in Liege at the start of October and again on Tuesday.

The prosecutor's office answered the earlier days before Tuesday's march had finished. Sudinfo reported that the Liege public prosecutor would apply what it called zero tolerance after events on 1, 2 and 5 October. The office counted 33 administrative arrests and 20 judicial arrests since 1 October, 17 of the judicial arrests being minors. Among those held was a 13-year-old accused of calling for schools to be set on fire. Investigators are also looking for people who organised or encouraged the disorder on social networks. School buildings, street furniture and other property were damaged, and police were injured.

The two counts should not be merged. The prosecutor's 53 arrests cover 1, 2 and 5 October, not the Tuesday march RTL watched. Tuesday adds a fresh list: a McDonald's, a Quick, windows at a named athenee, a burning bin, closed galleries, and a march that started at Saint-Lambert. Arrest numbers for Tuesday were not in the morning prosecutor's note. They will be a separate line if the office updates the tally.

The age detail is the one that fixes the file. Seventeen of the judicial arrests are minors. One is 13. A zero-tolerance line from a prosecutor, applied to pupils, means fast referrals rather than a warning and a return to class. It also means the office is treating posts that call for arson as part of the same case as the broken glass. That is a wider net than the people who were on the street when the bin was lit. A call to burn a school, if the prosecutor can tie it to a named account, is a different offence from breaking a window on the square, and the office has said it wants both.

Liege is not the only city in the French-speaking school protests, but it is the one with a named square, a named school and a named fast-food restaurant in Tuesday's copy. Place Saint-Lambert is the start and the return point. The Guillemins and the Fragnée bridge are the split. Anyone reconstructing the route can do it from those three places without a police map. The galleries closing is a commercial fact as well as a policing one: shops on the square shut while the march was still moving.

What the prosecutor has not published is a charge sheet for the 13-year-old beyond the call to burn schools, or a count of injured officers by name. What the city has is a second day of broken glass in the same week, a prosecutor who has already chosen the phrase zero tolerance, and a march that closed shops on the square where it began. The next useful number is Tuesday's arrest count, once the office adds it to the 33 and the 20 already on the books from the first days of October.