More than 700 people handed prison sentences over French riots

Some 742 people have been sentenced to prison over the recent riots in France.

Report informs via foreign media that in total, 1,278 verdicts have been handed down in the country, with over 95 percent of defendants convicted on a range of charges from vandalism to attacking police officers.

Six hundred people have already been jailed.

France's most intense bout of urban violence since 2005 began on June 27 when a police officer shot dead Nahel Merzouk – a 17-year-old boy of North African descent – during a traffic stop in the poor, working-class banlieue of Nanterre, west of Paris.