INTERVIEW
Four years ago, Adama Traoré died following an arrest. Since then, the legal and media battle has raged around his death, which has become a symbol in France of the fight against police violence. However, between medical advice and second opinion, justice is struggling to sort out the case. Sandra Chirac-Kollarik is the lawyer for one of the three gendarmes implicated in the death of Adama Traoré. His client was holding the victim's legs during his arrest. She states: "There was no ventral tackle". At the microphone of Europe 1, she accuses the civil parties of wanting to "impose their truth".
>> Watch Matthieu Belliard's morning show in replay and in podcast here
"To have a ventral tackle, you need an individual to be arrested who is standing, to be able to tackle him, by definition, and then be able to control and arrest him. This is not what happened with Adama Traoré, who is found lying down, rolled up in a sheet, in a closed place with closed shutters, who then has his arms positioned under his belly, who does not wish to take out his arms, who tenses up, who waves his legs, who refuses to to be arrested ", describes the lawyer. "We are in a dangerous situation because we do not know if a weapon is hidden under this belly, so the gendarmes will practice an arrest which will require the intervention of three gendarmes, and not two".
A distribution of roles between the gendarmes described at each hearing
On July 19, 2016, Adama Traoré died of suffocation in the Persan barracks, almost two hours after his arrest in his town of Beaumont-sur-Oise, in Val-d'Oise, after a chase and after having escaped a first arrest a hot day. Neither witnesses nor videos gave an account of the scene, only known by the testimony of the three gendarmes and the conclusions of the doctors. In one of the interrogations, one of the gendarmes indicated that the victim "would have gained the weight of all three". A statement that supports the thesis of a crash that resulted in death.
>> READ ALSO - Police violence: "Adama Traoré and George Floyd represent our fight"
"These are words which were kept by one of the gendarmes, there is no difficulty on that. But what must be clarified is that the gendarme who wears his words will in the process describe precisely everyone's action and when he expresses himself in this way it is to describe the instantaneity of a situation, the fact of having to master, "specifies the lawyer. In fact, the three gendarmes on the spot therefore, according to their statements, each controlled a part of the body: one for each arm, one for the legs, by rolling technique, to then handcuff the suspect.
"The distribution of roles has been constantly described by the three gendarmes," says Sandra Chirac-Kollarik. "At no time will you find in the hearings of these gendarmes, or even in the autopsy report quite simply, that there are traces on the body of Adama Traoré of the weight of 250 kilograms of gendarmes."
Wrong medical advice
On June 2, the family of Adama Traoré reveals a new medical opinion which affirms that the latter died as a result of a ventral plating, carried out by the three gendarmes. "It is not an expert opinion, it is a medical opinion. Any party in a legal procedure can produce a medical opinion, request a third doctor to the file but the question is: what do we submit to This doctor? What is his specialty? Under what conditions did he act? "asked the lawyer. "There we get out a report in 72 hours, a Pentecost weekend, from a doctor who, moreover, had spoken in a first medical opinion which contains a gross error".
>> READ ALSO - "They must stop the blunders": in Évry, young people's distrust of the police
"This first medical opinion presented a fracture at the fifth rib which attests to a positional asphyxia, therefore a crushing by gendarmes, whereas it is in fact the anterior arch and that it is the sign cardiac massage ", continues Sandra Chirac-Kollarik. "This is the latest legal expertise which indicates it. The civil parties want to impose their truth and are in no way looking for the truth from the start in this case."
The involvement of elements external to the file and the lynching of the three gendarmes
She denounces the lynching which her client, as well as the two other gendarmes, was subjected to. The latter are not indicted in the death of the young Adama Traoré, but placed under the status of assisted witnesses. "When we talk about you in terms that are unspeakable, when you are called killers, criminals on social networks, when even recently, on a TV show, we come to graze your surname, how can we to say that they are coping well with the situation? I do not wish anyone what these three gendarmes have lived for three years. "
For master Sandra Chirac-Kollarik, the family of Adama Traoré is frozen in a scenario. "Four years ago, a young man died, we do not forget him. We must ask questions, know how it happened, it is legitimate. The problem is that justice has been brought and that it provided answers. But that these answers do not go in the direction of preestablished truths (…) and today we stumble. "
>> READ ALSO - Demonstration on Saturday for Adama Traoré: "No risk of public order disturbances at this stage", according to Laurent Nunez
"In this case, we come to summon the political world, we come to summon the artistic world, we come to summon people who do not have access to this file. This means that the family of Adama Traoré, in this quest, who is not the search for the truth since this judicial truth does not interest him, comes to summon people to join this movement, this lynching ".