The Assize Court of Val-d'Oise acquitted Bagui Traoré on Friday, at the trial of the riots that followed the death of his brother Adama in July 2016, and pronounced up to 12 years of criminal imprisonment for two men.
Five people had been on trial since June 21 in Pontoise for gunfire at the police in Persan and Beaumont-sur-Oise during particularly intense urban violence on the nights following the young man's death. 24-year-old black, July 19, 2016, shortly after his arrest by the gendarmes.
Two men sentenced to 12 years in prison
Besides Bagui Traoré, his ex-partner and a man accused of being one of the shooters were acquitted.
On the other hand, two men were found guilty of having been the authors of the shootings and sentenced to twelve years of criminal imprisonment and eight years in prison, in accordance with the requisitions of the prosecution in their case.
In this "non-standard" file with 13,000 listed documents, some 90 civil parties and 1,700 questions to be answered by the court, it took around thirty hours - including one night at the hotel - for the jury chaired by the former anti-terrorism judge Marc Trévidic, to deliver a verdict.
When Bagui Traoré's acquittal was announced, applause and cheers from his supporters erupted in one of the large broadcasting tents, installed in the hall of the court.
Some of the dozens of civil party gendarmes had come in uniform to attend the verdict.
Central figure in this trial, Bagui Traoré was accused of being one of the instigators of the riots.
The athletic young man of 29, who appeared detained in the box, proclaimed his innocence throughout the five years of proceedings.
The material elements were lacking to prove that they were part of the shooters
Tuesday, after two and a half weeks of dense debate, a thunderclap sounded at the hearing: the public prosecutor demanded his acquittal.
The attorneys general considered that the material elements were lacking to prove that he was one of the shooters or had given them orders.
At the start of the trial, gendarmes and police officers marched to the bar to recount the chaos and the extreme tension of these nights of riots, where their superiors refused the use of lethal weapons to respond to the shootings, despite of danger.
In its pleadings Wednesday, the defense of Bagui Traoré for its part castigated a “shipwreck” of the judicial institution and accused investigators of having targeted him to “create a diversion” at the death of his brother Adama.
A drama still under investigation and whose shadow haunted the entire trial.
