At his defamation trial, Assa Traoré "clearly assumes" his platform "I accuse ...!"

An important security service had been deployed at the opening of the trial of Assa Traoré, sued for defamation by the gendarmes who arrested her brother, Adama, who died in 2016 after his arrest. Several dozen supporters came to attend the debates, heard this Thursday and Friday in the largest room of the Paris court. Among them, the LFI deputy for Seine-Saint-Denis, Eric Cocquerel. "We are trying to obtain justice for the death of his brother, but it is she who finds himself on the bench," he denounced before the hearing. And Friday, the influx of supporters should be even more massive: a call for a rally in front of the court was indeed launched by the defendant, to maintain "the pressure".

“If I am here today, it is because my little brother Adama is dead.

If he had not crossed the road of the gendarmes, this day of July 2016, he would still be alive.

I only demand truth and justice.

I shouldn't be in this place! ”

Immediately launches Assa Traoré at the helm, afro hairstyle, black T-shirt and long mint skirt.

The 36 year old young woman, mother of three children, appears for having published, on July 18, 2019, an article entitled "J'accuse…!"

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The absent gendarmes

In this text, which had had a strong impact, she accused the soldiers in particular of "having killed [his] brother Adama by crushing him", "of not having rescued [him]" and of "having maintained him. handcuffed face down on the ground ”. She also attacked a fourth gendarme - also a civil party - whom she accuses of having falsified a report. “The gendarmes dare to lodge a complaint, but they do not dare to come and take up this complaint here, in front of the court. It's sad, ”protests Assa Traoré. "The justice decides to attack me, whereas in front, the accusations are much more serious".

In her text, Adama Traoré's sister does not only attack the gendarmes. It implicates the former prosecutor of Pontoise, the emergency services, the forensic pathologist and several experts. “If justice had done its job, I wouldn't have needed to write this op-ed. If I had not made this platform, the file would have been classified, “she justifies at the bar.

The young woman believes that when she wrote this text, three years after the death of her brother, she "suffered the defamation of many media" and that it "was important to restore the truth.

»At that time,« not a single second does one speak of the suffering of the Traoré family, »she denounces.

"We dirtied my family, incriminated my little brother".

For her, it was only a question of "harming [her] brother, in order to protect the gendarmes".

This platform, Assa Traoré “fully assumes”.

Her "nod to Émile Zola" and to the Dreyfus affair is "as a French citizen" that she formulated.

For the lawyer for the gendarmes, "to accuse is clearly to defame"

“For me to accuse is clearly to defame. The platform holds accusatory remarks, it is undeniable, “ironically in his pleadings Me Rodolphe Bosselut, the lawyer for two of the three gendarmes. Mocking "the modesty" of the "parallel with Émile Zola", the council sees in this text only a "long series of accusations". “All the people who, directly or indirectly, intervened in this case are the subject of grievances. They would all have conspired, at their levels, to prevent the manifestation of the truth, ”he adds.

“According to Assa Traoré, the gendarmes deliberately caused Adama's death.

And every effort was made to bring about his death […] We are at the heart of an accusation of manifest seriousness, ”adds Bosselut.

The lawyer denounces the "strange parallel with the George Floyd case, someone who was immobilized with a knee on the neck for almost 10 minutes".

"It is unbearable for the gendarmes whom I forbid to hear say that they would have suffocated Adama Traoré", he insists.

Friday, the trial will resume at 1:30 p.m., with the pleadings of the other lawyers of the civil parties, that of the defense, then the requisitions.