Europe 1 with AFP 19:22, November 05, 2021

In November 2015, the preliminary investigation carried out by the General Inspectorate of the National Police (IGPN) ended with a classification without follow-up.

But an appeal from the family, which demanded a trial at the assizes, had led to the reopening of the investigations.

They would have shown "negligence" and "clumsiness": three police officers are returned to the criminal court for manslaughter after the arrest, with a strangulation key, which led to the death of Amadou Koumé in 2015 in Paris .

In the order for reference consulted by AFP, the examining magistrate noted "the lack of discernment" of the officials who kept him on the ground for more than six minutes on his stomach, hands handcuffed behind his back, in a bar near the Gare du Nord when it "no longer presented any danger to others".

"Association of slow mechanical asphyxia and cocaine intoxication"

The death of this father, then obviously under the influence of a psychotic crisis, had been noted at the police station where he had been taken, on the night of March 5 to 6, 2015. The final medical examination concluded that Amadou Koumé, 33, had succumbed to "pulmonary edema" caused by "the association of slow mechanical asphyxia and cocaine intoxication". She added that "the cervical and laryngeal trauma" caused by a strangulation key had "participated in the occurrence of this asphyxia", also "favored" by its immobilization on the ground.

According to the referral order issued on November 2, "the death could have taken place without impregnation of cocaine and simply because of slow mechanical asphyxiation".

A first crew of police officers had failed to control Amadou Koumé, a man of 1.90 m and 107 kg who was struggling.

Violence without "the intention" to "hurt"

A police officer from the anti-crime brigade (BAC) then lent a hand by carrying out a choke key lasting a few tens of seconds.

He was then handcuffed and resumed strangling for two minutes.

This official described before the judge his gesture of simple "lifting of the head", consisting in pressing the chin and not the throat of Amadou Koumé, held on the ground on the belly by another police officer.

Indicted for the criminal qualification of "willful violence resulting in death without intention of giving it", the agent who carried out the strangulation key escapes the assizes.

If she recognizes gestures "poorly mastered", the judge concluded that the violence, practiced without "the intention" to "hurt", had "not been committed illegitimately".

The strangling key at the heart of several investigations

The magistrate, however, accuses the three police officers of never having checked Amadou Koumé's state of health, "despite his psychiatric vulnerability".

She considers them responsible for "failures" which led to the death, justifying their trial for "manslaughter".

The prosecutions for non-assistance to a person in danger are dropped.

A controversial technique, the strangulation key, banned in the gendarmerie and officially replaced since last July in the police, is at the heart of several investigations opened after the death of men arrested.

Its use had sparked an uproar after the death in January 2020 of a delivery man, Cédric Chouviat, during a police check.

In the Amadou Koumé case, the Defender of Rights judged in 2018 the use of this technique "neither necessary nor proportionate".

The policeman defended himself before the examining magistrate by invoking the urgency in the face of a "very significant risk" that Amadou Koumé, endowed with "Herculean strength", seizes one of the weapons of his colleagues.