• Assa Traoré is tried for defamation this Thursday and Friday before the 17th criminal chamber of the Paris court.

  • She appears following the publication of a forum on Facebook, entitled "J'accuse", in which she accuses the gendarmes by name of having "killed" her brother.

At the criminal court in Paris,

If it had to be done again, Assa Traoré would do it again "without hesitation". "It is a platform that I assume at 1,000%, that I would rewrite, that I would extend even if necessary", insists the young woman of 36 years, afro cut and colorful skirt, at the helm of the 17th chamber of the Paris Criminal Court. The older sister of Adama Traoré, who died in July 2016 in the courtyard of the gendarmerie in Persan (Val-d'Oise), is being sued for defamation by the three gendarmes who carried out the arrest. In question: a column published on Facebook in July 2018 in which she accuses them of "having killed [her] brother Adama by crushing him with the weight of their bodies", of "not having rescued [her] brother and of 'having kept handcuffed face down on the ground'.

If the procedure is relatively classic on paper, the exceptional order service, this Thursday, and the choice to hear this trial in one of the largest rooms of the courthouse are all signs of the sensitivity of this case. , which has become a symbol of police violence.

In the public, largely acquired in Assa Traoré, about sixty people took place, relatives of the defendant obviously but also the LFI deputy Eric Coquerel.

Advised by their lawyers, the gendarmes chose not to come.

"There are already their names everywhere on the Internet, we try to avoid that there are also their photos", slips one of them.

"Justice does not give the truth to my family"

"I wrote this letter because justice does not give the truth to my family," explains the defendant in a clear voice. Assa Traoré is at the bar as at the stand, she speaks quickly and pleads her cause as she urges the crowd. "If we are here today, it is because my brother is dead and if he had not crossed these three gendarmes, he would still be alive", she insists. With her text, written in the style of "J'accuse" by Emile Zola, she intended to restore the "truth" in this case still under investigation. On the action of the gendarmes on the day of the arrest, but also on that of forensic pathologists, various experts, magistrates who, in his view, covered the police.

"All these words, I did not invent them, that's what they [the gendarmes] said in police custody", insists the defendant. This is the difficulty in this case: behind this procedure, which relates to press law, many points of the investigation into the young man's death are addressed. However, almost each document in this file is the subject of a different interpretation by the parties. On this point, for example, Assa Traoré refers to the hearing of one of the three gendarmes, a few hours after the tragedy. "He took the weight of our bodies to all three at the time of his arrest," he said then. But in a second hearing - there will be three - the soldier specifies: “At three, in a few seconds, we manage to bring the arm behind the opponent's back. »Understood, the pressure does notwas only short lived.

By calling as witnesses a sociologist specializing in racism, a history and geography professor wishing to intervene on the "criminalization of victims" or an activist wishing to "bring his experience to the lies of the police", Me Yassine Bouzrou, the lawyer of the defendant, endeavored, throughout the afternoon, to demonstrate that the Traoré family was the victim of a judicial harassment, even of a manipulation, and thus support the words of the forum of Assa Traore.

"All those involved in the case are implicated in this case [...], so they would all have conspired at their level to prevent the manifestation of the truth and cover up the abuses of the gendarmes", mocked in his plea, Me Rodolphe Bosselut, who defends one of the gendarmes.

The trial is scheduled to continue on Friday.

Justice

Paris: Assa Traoré sentenced for violating the presumption of innocence of the gendarmes

Society

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  • Gendarme

  • Trial

  • Paris

  • Defamation

  • Adama traore

  • Justice