- New rally against police violence is scheduled for Saturday in Paris
- According to relatives of Adama Traoré, he died of asphyxia caused by a ventral plating, the gendarmes, they put forward medical history.
- The three gendarmes were placed under the status of assisted witness for failure to assist a person in danger.
- In the United States, four police officers were charged with murder and aiding and abetting after the death of George Floyd.
On the fresco unveiled earlier this week by artist JR, two looks side by side. On the right, that of George Floyd, who died of asphyxiation under the knee of a policeman, last May 25 in the United States. On the left, that of Adama Traoré, who died in the gendarmerie of Persan-Beaumont, in Val-d'Oise, less than two hours after his arrest, on July 19, 2016. "Today, when we are fighting for Georges Floyd, we're fighting for Adama Traore, "Assa Traore said on Tuesday June 2 to the crowd of demonstrators massed in front of the Paris court.
Like the American, his 24-year-old younger brother, breathed shortly before his death, "I have trouble breathing". In either case, the victims are two black men, who died of asphyxiation. Are the two cases comparable, however, beyond the symbol? "We are witnessing an instrumentalization of the emotion of the Floyd case to put pressure on the Traore case," laments Me Rodolphe Bosselut, one of the lawyers for the three gendarmes, while a new demonstration is scheduled for Saturday in Paris.
Different arrest conditions
If the conditions of the death of George Floyd and the 8 minutes 46 during which he dies under the knee of a policeman were filmed from different angles, on the other hand, no video surveillance camera captured the arrest of Adama Traoré July 19, 2016. That day, the gendarmes of Isle-Adam, in Val-d'Oise, are looking for his older brother, Bagui, suspected in an extortion case. At the end of the afternoon, it is located in Beaumont-sur-Oise. If he lets himself go, Adama Traoré, who was with him, runs away. Caught for the first time, handcuffed, he manages to escape thanks to a stampede triggered by an unknown friend.
A quarter of an hour later - at 5.30 p.m. - he was spotted with an acquaintance where he hid under a sheet, behind a sofa. In their hearings, which 20 Minutes was able to consult , the three gendarmes were concerned that they could not distinguish his hands. "We throw ourselves on him with my two colleagues, he is virulent and opposes his arrest. His hands are under his body and we are trying to immobilize his arms ”, explains one of the three gendarmes, questioned by the investigators a few hours after the death of Adama Traoré. "I did not strike anything but it took the weight of our bodies to all three at the time of his arrest," he said in the same hearing.
Words which, according to relatives of the Traore family, substantiate the thesis of a death by asphyxiation resulting from a ventral tackle, an authorized but decried technique. “There has never been a ventral tackle, it is also not a technique used by the gendarmerie. He used these awkward words, to which he immediately returned, to evoke the simultaneity of their action ”, affirms one of his advisers, Rodolphe Bosselut.
In a second hearing - there will be three - the soldier effectively specifies: "Three, in a few seconds, we manage to bring the arm behind the opponent's back. To do this, he explains that he used the dorsal costal control technique. This "materializes by my right knee in the center of the back and the left knee on the dorsal rib [the ribs]", while his two colleagues hold the arms of Adama Traoré. According to Le Point , the man with whom the scene takes place and who should be heard by the examining magistrates during July, confirms that the scene would not have lasted more than "thirty seconds, barely a minute". Far from the 8 minutes 46 of the Floyd affair.
Failure to assist person at risk
On leaving, Adama Traoré is alive and well but has trouble breathing. According to the same witness, the 24-year-old was already short of breath when he got home. This July 19, 2016, it is overwhelming heat in the Paris region, more than 30 degrees in the late afternoon. On the way to the gendarmerie, Adama Traoré lost consciousness. Rescuers are immediately called, the victim is put, according to the gendarmes, in the lateral safety position (PLS). However, in his hearing, the fire chief said that when he arrived, the victim was "face down" and that the gendarmes were reluctant to remove his handcuffs.
The failure to assist a person in danger and the lack of reaction from the other police officers present on the scene despite the calls for help, it was in the George Floyd affair that shocked even the gesture. Was it the same in the Traoré case? If the examining magistrates did not accept the voluntary violence resulting in the death without intending to give it, the three gendarmes were placed under the intermediate status of assisted witness for "non-assistance to person in danger". The words of this firefighter were nonetheless contradicted, in particular by the volunteer firefighter who was by his side and by his captain, who arrived on the scene a few minutes later. "I want to tell you that Chief X tells me that the victim was in PLS when he arrived," he told the investigators.
Battle of expertise
In his final report, the medical examiner who examined George Floyd noted a medical history but concluded that the victim died by "homicide" because of "pressure on his neck". Her body has many traces of bruises, especially on the face, torso and wrists. In the Adama Traoré case, on the other hand, the autopsy and the counter-autopsy found no trace of violence. If both agree on a death linked to "an asphyxial syndrome", they contradict each other on the existence of "lesions of infectious appearance". This is one of the major difficulties in this file: since 2016, medical expertise has followed one another without agreeing.
A year after the death of Adama Traoré, a first report evokes "previous weaknesses" to explain the asphyxiation. In September 2018, an expert appraisal concluded that the young man's life prognosis was "irreversible" before he was even arrested because a genetic disease, sickle cell anemia, associated with a rare pathology, sarcoidosis, having led to asphyxiation during an episode of stress. In 2019, when the investigation is about to end, a new expert opinion, carried out by four doctors at the request and at the family's expense, supports the opposite conclusions and invites us to wonder about a “mechanical asphyxia and positional ”, that is to say linked to the technique of interpellation. On March 24, 2020, a new expert report ordered by justice exonerates the gendarmes. This was again contradicted on June 2 by the report, at the request and at the expense of the civil parties, of a doctor who called into question a "ventral tackle".
Dead because black?
In the United States, the death of George Floyd - suspected of having sought to sell a counterfeit 20-dollar bill - has revived the debate on racist violence committed by the police. According to data from the Washington Post, black people are twice as likely to be killed during a police operation: 30 blacks per million were shot dead by police since January 1, against 12 by whites million. Can these data apply to France?
Our file on violence
There are no comparable figures, in particular because the law prohibits ethnic statistics. On the other hand, out of some 1,500 judicial investigations entrusted to the police in 2019, around thirty relate to acts of racism or discrimination, indicated at the beginning of the week the director general of the police. Another enlightening fact: in a report published in 2018, the Defender of Rights, Jacques Toubon indicated that young men perceived as black, Arab or Maghreb had "a probability 20 times higher than the others" of being controlled.
On several occasions, Assa Traoré has thus indicated that if her brother fled that day, it is because he did not have his papers with him and feared an identity check. The gendarmes, they recall that more than 1,300 euros in cash and a bag of cannabis herb were found on the victim's body.
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- Police violence
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- Adama Traore