The Adama Traoré affair turns more and more to a battle of legal and medical expertise. The challenge? Attempt to establish the causes of death of this 24-year-old young man on July 19, 2016, a hot day, in the barracks of the Persian gendarmes, almost two hours after his arrest in his city of Beaumont-sur-Oise (Val d'Oise). After having escaped a first arrest, he was arrested after a chase, in the house where he had hidden.
According to our information, a new expertise - the fourth and the second private - validates the thesis of asphyxiation during immobilization, a scenario that the family of Adama Traoré has supported from the start. It is precisely she who mandated a professor of medicine with the mission of examining a medical judicial counter-expertise dated March 24 which exonerated the gendarmes. However, this Parisian professor of medicine has a completely different analysis of the facts.
This systemic disease specialist, who worked on the documents in the file, was to answer six questions related to the young man's death. From his analysis, he retains the pathophysiological scenario: "Death follows an asphyxial syndrome, which follows a cardiogenic edema," he wrote in his conclusions of June 2. According to this professor, this edema itself follows "a positional asphyxia by the ventral plating" which resulted in "the positioning in body hindering the normal exchange of gas and with the impossibility of being released from this position".
Expertise validated by specialist doctors
Still in his conclusions, the independent expert did not identify any other cause of death. Above all, he pronounces himself in favor of a death "following an asphyxial syndrome by ventral plating". A scenario which highlights the conditions of the arrest and detention of Adama Traoré.
“This second opinion was carried out by a professor of internal medicine from a prestigious Parisian hospital. The conclusions of this report are very clear: the death of Adama Traoré results from the ventral plating exercised by the three gendarmes, reacts Me Yassine Bouzrou, lawyers for the young man's family. In his view, this independent expertise has "the same probative value" as expert opinions ordered by the courts. "This report was placed in the investigation file, it is therefore contradictory, in accordance with the law," added the criminal.
Finally, Mr. Bouzrou believes that "unlike the experts appointed by the judges", the independent doctors who carried out the counter-assessments are "all specialists in the diseases mentioned in the file". The lawyer maintains that, given their skills, their "conclusions are essential in the face of those which exclude the ventral plating as the cause of the death of Adama Traore. "
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Recall in this file, two judicial expert reports have already dismissed the responsibility of the gendarmes.