The public prosecutor requested on Monday July 4 a year in prison suspended against three police officers tried for manslaughter after the death in 2015 of a 33-year-old man, Amadou Koumé, during his arrest in a bar in Paris. .
This father, prey on the night of March 5 to 6, 2015 to mental disorders which had prompted the bartender to call the police, died a few minutes after his arrest, succumbing to “slow mechanical asphyxia”.
According to the expertise carried out during the investigation, "the cervical and laryngeal trauma" caused by two strangulation keys "participated in the occurrence of this asphyxia", also "favored" by his immobilization on the ground, on his stomach, for more than six and a half minutes.
Returned to court for manslaughter, the police officers risk 3 years' imprisonment and a fine of 45,000 euros.
"Nobody would have liked to be in front of this court today", declared the prosecutor from the outset, speaking of a "tragedy" and a "particularly delicate case".
Read alsoDeath of Amadou Koumé in 2015: at their trial, the training of the police in question
For the magistrate, the use of force was "necessary" and "proportionate" that evening: Amadou Koumé is "not violent" but "unpredictable", he "resists", she argued, adding that witnesses had spoken of "a muscular arrest, but not of illegitimate violence".
“What can be reproached (to the three police officers) is this unique criminal fault: culpable negligence, consisting in having left Amadou Koumé in ventral decubitus, handcuffed, without anyone inquiring about his condition and despite the force mobilized for him. 'call out,' she said.
"state of dementia"
She requested the same sentence against Anthony B., a member of the anti-crime brigade (BAC) who carried out two strangulation maneuvers, Benjamin P., then a brigadier, who put a knee on his lower back then on his arm, and against Didier M., at the time a major, “in contact” with the thirties “from start to finish”.
“Nobody was concerned about the state of health of Amadou Koumé”, whose “vulnerability should have attracted attention”, underlined the prosecutor.
If he was in a “state of dementia”, the officials also had a “distorted relationship to reality”: over the minutes, “it is clear that the danger that he can incarnate is diminishing, n 'exists no more'.
“I know that this legal response is not satisfactory for the victims, but I know that
they are above all in search of truth.
(…) I know that it is an impossible mourning”, concluded the prosecutor, while some members of the public left the room, seeming to protest against the required sentence.
"It's also maybe a way that it doesn't happen again," she added.
The defense was to plead in the evening.
