Two police officers appear from Thursday before the Paris Court of Appeal. During an intervention in June 2013 in the Marnaudes district of Villemomble, a projectile shot struck Fatouma Kébé, a mother, and a flash ball had injured one of her sons.
At the first trial in Bobigny in 2018, self-defense was retained and the police acquitted. A decision that contrasted with the requisitions of the Advocate General who had dismissed it. The prosecution had decided to appeal the verdict.
On appeal, it is the same case that will be tried, but it is not quite the same trial. The cards were shuffled and the context changed.
In Bobigny, the Assize Court had tried three police officers and the two sons of Fatouma for rebellion. All were acquitted or excused from punishment for one of the brothers. In Paris, only the two police officers Antoine C. and Michaël S. will be on the dock.
The victim has died since
The two brothers will sit this time on the benches of the victims. But one place will remain empty, that of their mother, Fatouma, overlooked by the police. She died of a serious illness last summer, at 58 years old. She had lost the use of one eye after being shot. Her two sons Makan and Mohamed will defend her memory.
Seven years after the fact, the global context has also changed.
Police violence is now agitating the political debate since the movement of yellow vests. This is the question that the lawyers for the civil parties will raise. Me Philippe-Henry Honegger assures him: “In 2013, a suburban kid who took a flash ball was business as usual . With this affair, it is the first time that the issue of flash ball is debated in an assize trial ”.
Suddenly, the arrest degenerates
This summer evening in 2013, the BAC (anti-crime squad) is trying to put an end to a rodeo in the Marnaudes district. A crowd forms. The police are overwhelmed and the arrest degenerates. In the confusion a young man is arrested, it is Makan.
His brother intervenes, he receives a punch in the face and a shot from LDB grazes his ear. Fatouma, the mother of the two brothers, comes down from her apartment when she sees that her children are in conflict with the police. As she turns her back on the police, she feels intense pain in the right eye. A projectile has just struck it in the face. Is it one of the rubber rollers released by the grenade explosion that maimed Fatouma or the flash ball? The expert reports did not allow us to decide.
"The usage was not respected"
On the other hand, the investigation had shown that the weapons had not been used in the state of the art. The IGPN, the police force, will establish that the police officer had thrown the grenade “by throwing it upwards and not by spoon by making it roll on the ground. The custom was not respected ”. Similarly, the LDB, cousin of the flash ball, had been used at a distance less than the compulsory 10 meters. The projectile had grazed Mohamed's ear. While the pitcher should not be aimed at the head or genitals.
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If the IGPN experts came to these conclusions, it was thanks to a practice still in its infancy at the time. "The business came out thanks to videos shot by local residents on their balconies," said Honegger. They will contradict the police statements.
But Me Daniel Merchat, lawyer for Antoine C., a seasoned policeman with impeccable service hopes to obtain a new acquittal.
“My client does not dispute having injured Ms. Kébé, but the weapon or the projectile was not identified. The use of weapons was legitimate, ”he explains. Before the assize court, the policeman indicated that he had to use the grenade because "he feared for his physical integrity and that of these colleagues" He recognized the illegal use, which he said was justified by the urgency of the situation.