The investigating judges in charge of the investigation into the death of Adama Traoré, wish to hear in July two witnesses whom they have never heard before, we learned this Friday from concordant sources, confirming a information from the Parisian . The young man died in 2016 during an arrest.
The first witness is a man with whom the young 24-year-old black man had taken refuge before his arrest. He then tried to escape from the police during an operation which targeted his brother Bagui, suspected of extortion. This witness has so far only been heard by the gendarmes at the start of the case. The second is a woman who claimed to have witnessed this first attempted arrest.
Dead two hours after his arrest
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.
“I have been asking for these very important hearings for two years. They had never been carried out, which justified our denouncing a denial of justice. We welcome this decision of the magistrates who therefore seem to finally begin a serious investigation of this matter, ”reacted to AFP Me Yassine Bouzrou, the lawyer for the Traoré family.
“Long-planned” investigations
This decision was notified by the judges Wednesday, the day after the disclosure of a medical report produced at the request of the family and calling into question the technique of arresting the gendarmes who arrested Adama Traoré. She also intervenes after the demonstration Tuesday before the Paris court. This, prohibited by the police headquarters, had been maintained by the young man's family to "demand justice". It took place a few days after a final medical examination ordered by the magistrates which again put out of question the police.
“These hearings are not the consequence of the demonstration. These investigations had been planned for a long time and they had simply been postponed because of the health crisis, ”said Me Rodolphe Bosselut, the gendarmes' lawyer.
Me Bouzrou also wrote to the examining magistrates in order to demand the divestiture of the General Inspectorate of the National Gendarmerie (IGGN) and to obtain that the investigations be entrusted to the criminal brigade. To justify his request, he notably questions an internal message from the director general of the national gendarmerie, Christian Rodriguez, sent on Wednesday and of which AFP had a copy.
"Pressure" on the investigators?
In it, Christian Rodriguez "renews all (his) support and all (his) confidence" to the gendarmes involved in the arrest of Adama Traoré, who are placed under the status of assisted witness in this case.
"By affirming that he has full confidence in the gendarmes implicated in the death of Adama Traoré and by giving them his support, Christian Rodriguez is therefore putting pressure on the IGGN investigators", writes Me Bouzrou in this letter , of which AFP has obtained a copy. "It is indeed impossible for them to conduct this procedure with the independence essential to carrying out an effective investigation since they are subject to the opinion of the highest hierarchy of the national gendarmerie," he adds.
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