A police officer will be tried on November 8 before the criminal court of Créteil for violence committed on a man acquitted by the Assize Court of Val-de-Marne in March during the appeal trial for the murder of Vanesa Campos, AFP learned Tuesday from the lawyers of the latter and the prosecutor's office of Créteil.
The policeman had been placed in custody and brought on May 25, said the prosecutor of Créteil. He will be tried for violence by a person holding public authority and sexist contempt, the prosecutor's office said.
Criminal conspiracy
Karim Abousheisha's lawyers, Léa Zimmermann and Antoine Aussedat, declined to comment. Their client, an Egyptian national, was acquitted on appeal by the Val-de-Marne Assize Court in March.
He was on trial for criminal conspiracy in the trial for the murder of Vanesa Campos, a transgender sex worker shot dead in the Bois de Boulogne in August 2018. He had been sentenced to six years in prison at first instance. During the trial, he had filed a complaint against one of the police officers of his escort in the box: he accused him of hitting him in the face and insulting him during a recess on the afternoon of 17 March.
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A "verbal altercation" broke out between the official and the accused, after he got up during the hearing to relieve back pain, for which he was authorized in the morning by the president. An instruction that had not been transmitted to the police present in the box in the afternoon.
During the interruption of the hearing, his lawyer, Me Léa Zimmermann, had heard "screams" of his client coming from the corridor behind the box. Going down to the depot to see him, she had found that he "trembled and had traces of blows to the left temple and right cheek," she assured AFP. His client had explained to him that when he left the box, the policeman had "insulted" and "hit" him. The Créteil prosecutor's office had opened an investigation and referred the matter to the ethics and staff support service, which depends on the police headquarters.
