Riot in protest against police violence in Paris

The protests in Paris were triggered by two new autopsy reports, which draw contradictory conclusions about the cause of Adama Traore's death in connection with a police intervention in 2016.

The 24-year-old fled from an ID check and hid in a building, where he was later found and overpowered by three police officers, who according to one of the police witnesses, kept him down with his total body weight. Trauma lost consciousness in the police car and later died at a police station nearby. When the ambulance arrived he still had handcuffs.

On Friday, police were cleansed by a medical report, which states that Traoré did not die of "positional asphyxia", that is, asphyxiation as a result of being held in a position that makes it impossible to breathe. Instead, the experts believe that the cause of death was heart failure triggered partly by underlying illnesses and partly by severe stress onset and fatigue during police intervention.

The report also does not rule out that the THC - the active ingredient in cannabis - that Traoré had in the blood may have contributed to his death.

That assessment is dismissed in another report, commissioned by Traore's family, released on Tuesday. According to him, he died of police action during the arrest.

The demonstrations began late Tuesday afternoon outside a court building in northern Paris, in violation of the coronary-related ban on crowds of more than ten people. Some protesters threw projectiles at the police, who responded with tear gas to disperse the crowd.

At the same time, police officers and protesters were clashing near the ring road around the capital, where police fired rubber-coated bullets at protesters after being attacked with stones.

Many who walked out on the street were clearly inspired by the protest movement that paralyzed parts of the United States last week, after the unarmed black man George Floyd was killed during a police raid. Several posters featured the same slogan scanned on the streets of Minneapolis, New York and Los Angeles: "I can't breathe" and "Black lives matter".

- When we fight for George Floyd we also fight for Adama Traore. What is happening in the United States is an echo of what is happening in France, Traore's sister Assa said in a speech to the protesters earlier on Tuesday.