Four years after the death of Adama Traoré, a young black man who died after a police arrest, the battle for experts continues. The examining magistrates in charge of the case "asked for a new medical expertise", announced, Friday July 10, the lawyers of the gendarmes.

"Following the hearing" by the investigating judges on July 2, "" of the witness with whom Adama Traoré had taken refuge, (the investigating magistrates) decided, by order to carry out a new expert measure entrusted to Belgian doctors ", reported Me Rodolphe Bosselut, Pascal Rouiller and Sandra Chirac Kollarik, lawyers for the gendarmes, in this press release.

On July 19, 2016, Adama Traoré died in the barracks of the Persian gendarmes, almost two hours after his arrest in his city of Beaumont-sur-Oise (Val-d'Oise) and at the end of a chase, after having escaped a first arrest. The death of the young black man was erected by the family and his relatives as a symbol of police violence. Organized in a collective, the latter demand that light be shed on the circumstances of his death.

Testimonies which relaunch the investigation

Additional investigations were decided after the hearing of two witnesses last week by the examining magistrates responsible for this file. It is the man with whom Adama Traoré had taken refuge just before his arrest by three gendarmes and a woman who had attended his first arrest.

The gendarmes' lawyers, who have not been indicted, announced last week that they were going to request the closure of the investigation, considering that it was "time to put an end to this file" which contains " more than 2,400 minutes ".

The two hearings led "the investigating magistrates to spontaneously order investigations. These new acts show that the request to close the investigation of the gendarmes is rejected", welcomed Me Yassine Bouzrou, the lawyer for the Traoré family.

"These investigations do not seem essential to me. They concern the first arrest, the circumstances of which have already been established," said Me Rodolphe Bosselut, one of the gendarmes' lawyers.

A battle of experts

Almost four years after the facts, the judicial investigation has above all become a battle of medical expertise. Closed in December 2018, the investigations were reopened by the judges in March 2019, after the delivery of a medical report produced at the request of the family which contradicted the conclusions on the death.

If seven experts commissioned by justice have so far put forward medical histories - including heart and genetics - to explain this death, thus clearing the gendarmes, the reports of four doctors chosen by the family have swept their conclusions and pointed out the technique police.

After a final legal expertise which excluded the soldiers, the young man's family has made since late May numerous requests for deeds, including the cancellation of this expertise.

With AFP

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