2023-12-04 10:53:27
This is a first that could set a precedent. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) opened on Monday, December 4, a procedure against France for “act of torture” or “inhuman or degrading treatment” aimed at injuries inflicted by a police officer on a demonstrator. The court decided to take up a request filed by Laurent Théron, who had lost vision in his right eye after being hit by a hand grenade (GMD) thrown by a CRS during a demonstration in Paris against the “labor” law, in September 2016.
For the ECHR, any disproportionate use of force by the police can be considered on the basis of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights as a form of “torture” or “inhuman or degrading treatment”, depending on the degree of suffering inflicted. In the case of Laurent Théron, victim of a “extreme pain” and permanent disability while peacefully demonstrating, “we can speak of an act of torture within the meaning of article 3”explains Me Céline Moreau, who filed, with Messrs Lucie Simon and Olivier Peter, the request accepted by the ECHR.
Authoritarian regimes, such as Turkey, have already been condemned under this article for the dangerous use of tear gas or water cannons against demonstrators. If France is convicted, at the end of the procedure which could last two to three years, the decision concerning the inappropriate use of GMDs would be imposed in French law, but it would also set jurisprudence among the forty-six member states of the ECHR.
“No threat”
On September 15, 2016, Laurent Théron, a nurse and union activist then aged 46, took part in a demonstration in Paris against the “labor” law. At the end of the afternoon, as he walked, hands in his pockets, without presenting the slightest threat, towards a street adjacent to Place de la République to leave the gathering, he was hit by a burst of GMD. When it exploded, the grenade, intended to disperse a crowd as a deterrent, propelled eighteen rubber pebbles around it, one of which hit Laurent Théron in the face.
Under emergency surgery, he lost vision in his right eye. Barely out of his general anesthesia, the nurse was questioned and filed a complaint against law enforcement training or authorization to use this type of grenade. The analysis of videos, testimonies and ballistic expertise also established that he had carried out a “bell” shot, at height, prohibited by regulations.
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