2023-07-09 01:28:48
A former police officer was sentenced by the Crétéil Criminal Court to an eight-month suspended prison sentence for violence against journalist and activist Taha Bouhafs on the sidelines of a 2019 demonstration. Neither he nor Mr. Bouhafs were present during the judgment , delivered on Friday 7 July.
The former officer of the anti-crime brigade (BAC), who was dismissed from the police in January for threatening with his service weapon and hitting a colleague with whom he had an extramarital relationship, was on the other hand released from the head of slanderous denunciation for which he was also on trial.
Taha Bouhafs’ lawyer, Me Arié Alimi, was delighted with the conviction, telling Agence France-Presse that his client had “suffered what all young people from working-class neighborhoods experience”to know “violent and racist police treatment and a prosecution to extinguish the violence”.
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Ten days of incapacity for work
The facts of which the ex-policeman was accused took place on June 11, 2019 when Mr. Bouhafs was arrested while filming a strike by undocumented workers in front of a Chronopost warehouse in Alfortville (Val-de-Marne) for online media “there if I’m there”. The journalist and activist was first pushed back by the BAC agent, dressed in civilian clothes, before the two men shouted at each other, Mr. Bouhafs accusing the policeman of behaving “like a scum”.
Mr. Bouhafs, who was granted ten days of total incapacity for work (ITT) after this incident, maintained that the ex-policeman dislocated his shoulder during the handcuffing, then continued to beat him in the police vehicle taking him to the police station. Initially sued by the former BAC agent for « outrage » et “rebellion”Mr. Bouhafs had been released in May 2021.
Read also: Prosecuted for contempt and rebellion, reporter Taha Bouhafs was released
During the hearing, which took place on April 12, the prosecutor requested the release of the ex-policeman. “You have just been asked to consider that an arrest is illegitimate violence”she then said, believing that the case fell “ethics, not criminal”.
The lawyer for the former police officer, Me Laurent-Franck Liénard, who also defends the brigadier who shot young Nahel during a traffic check in Nanterre on June 27, for his part denounced a “purely political approach aimed at destroying the man I defend”.
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