After more than two years of investigation, these hearings were eagerly awaited. The three gendarmes who carried out the muscular arrest of Adama Traoré in 2016 in Beaumont-sur-Oise (Val-d’Oise) were heard on Tuesday and Wednesday for the first time by the investigating judge in charge of the investigations.
The soldiers were “placed under the status of assisted witness in the absence of serious and concordant evidence capable of justifying their accusation under the crime of failure to assist a person in danger”, reads the press release from their lawyers Rodolphe Bosselut, Pascal Rouiller and Sandra Chirac Kollarik.
On the ground under the weight of the bodies of three gendarmes
These hearings come after a recent final report exculpating the gendarmes. During his arrest after a chase, on his birthday, July 19, 2016, the 24-year-old was held to the ground under the weight of the bodies of three gendarmes.
A second partial opinion on the organs confirmed last year a death “due to asphyxiation” linked to a previous state of health, without allowing the question of the gendarmes’ responsibility to be resolved. He also excluded the hypothesis of cardiomyopathy and infectious state raised by the initial autopsy, contested by the family.
The hypothesis of a rare genetic disease
However, according to the final report delivered to the magistrate on September 14, “the vital prognosis (was) irreversibly limited” before this arrest. The report of the four doctors concludes that a genetic disease, “sickle cell anemia“, associated with a rare pathology, led to asphyxia during an episode of stress and fatigue.
From the beginning of the story, the relatives denounced a “gross mistake” by the gendarmes, accusing them of not having intervened to help the young man, who was left handcuffed until the firefighters arrived.
Two years later they paraded for Adama Traoré
Arrested for the first time, the young man fled. A chase ensued that lasted “about 15 minutes” in intense heat, before he was found and pinned to the ground by gendarmes. Adama Traoré had felt ill in their vehicle before dying in the courtyard of the gendarmerie in the nearby town of Persan.
“Correct management” of loss of consciousness
The hearing of the gendarmes “made it possible to establish that at no time were they aware of the mortal danger that threatened the young man during or after the arrest and that they correctly managed Mr. Traoré’s loss of consciousness until he was taken into care by the police of fire and Samu”, their lawyers estimate.
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