The scale of the demonstration of support Tuesday in Paris shows how much the death of Adama Traoré remains in the news. As the United States rises to denounce police violence after the death of George Floyd, the investigation opened since the death of the 24-year-old young man during his arrest in Beaumont-sur-Oise (Val-d'Oise) in July 2016 became a symbol of this subject in France.
VIDEO. Rally for Adama Traoré: 20,000 demonstrators gathered, incidents during the dispersal
The circumstances of the death of Adama Traoré at the heart of the case
On July 19, 2016, around 5 p.m., gendarmes from L'Isle-Adam intervened in Beaumont-sur-Oise (Val-d'Oise) to arrest Bagui Traoré, as part of an investigation for extortion. His brother Adama, who accompanied him, ran away to try to escape control. Caught for the first time, he manages to escape again. Reinforcement is called.
Adama Traoré is spotted after finding refuge with a local resident. Three gendarmes arrest the young man who was celebrating his 24th birthday that day. "We were on three to control it," later said one of the soldiers to investigators, accrediting the thesis of a ventral tackle. Adama Traoré is then handcuffed and placed in the gendarmerie car when he quickly complained of difficulty breathing. During the short trip to the Persian police, Traoré seems to lose consciousness.
The emergency services are alerted. When they arrive at the Persan gendarmerie (Val-d'Oise), the firefighters discover the victim lying on his stomach, handcuffed in the back, without pulse and in respiratory arrest. Despite a cardiac massage and the intervention of the Samu, Adama Traoré cannot be resuscitated. The announcement of his death marks the start of five nights of violence in his commune. After two autopsies, his body is buried in Bamako (Mali).
A judicial and forensic marathon
In a case without witnesses or video, the only testimonies are those of the three gendarmes who carried out the arrest and those of the rescuers who arrived later at the gendarmerie. With certain contradictions. The rest is a debate of medical experts whose conclusions are contradictory.
The last fencing took place this spring. The examining magistrates in charge of the case had ordered a new expert report (the third in the file). Unveiled on May 29, she concluded that Adama Traoré "did not die from positional asphyxia, but from cardiogenic edema". Enough to dismiss the responsibility of the gendarmes by pointing the finger at cardiac and pulmonary pathologies as well as the context of intense stress and physical exertion. Four days later, this Tuesday, June 3, the family replied by adding new private expertise to the file. The doctor, this time, retains "a positional asphyxia induced by the ventral plating".
Four years earlier, the autopsy and the counter-autopsy had already revealed particularly contradictory conclusions. At the time, the Pontoise prosecutor had also omitted to mention the asphyxiation hypothesis, insisting on an infection of which Adama Traoré was allegedly the victim. A communication that precipitated the change of scenery of the case in Paris and the appointment of new investigating judges.
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Expertises and counter-expertises then noted a heart disease (heart disease) and evoked multiple factors which could precipitate the death of the young man. At the end of 2018, the judges closed the investigations without examining the gendarmes, opening the way to a dismissal. But on March 11, 2019, the family had released the medical report they had asked four professors from Paris hospitals. The latter brushed aside the conclusions of their colleagues, qualified as "theoretical speculations" and invited to "ask the question of positional or mechanical asphyxiation". A document that the judges had not considered valid but which had led them to request a new medical investigation.
“Justice for Adama” or the symbol of the fight against police violence
The mobilization of 20,000 people Tuesday evening in front of the Paris courthouse is one more sign of the symbolic scale that this affair has taken on for four years. In France, it has become the embodiment of the fight against police violence. And it is carried by a face, that of Assa Traore, Adama's big sister.
“Our fight is universal. He denounces the police repression experienced by young people of color in working-class neighborhoods, the young woman explained to us last July. The Adama affair has exposed a repressive, authoritarian and violent system based on two-tier justice […]. If we hadn't fought, my brother would have officially died of serious heart disease and infection. "
Social media messages, t-shirts, slogan, call to demonstrate… support committees are on all fronts to support the fight of the Traoré family. Personalities from all walks of life also join this cause. Artists like Youssoupha, Kery James and Mac Tyer organized support concerts. Omar Sy, Christine & the Queens, IAM, Yannick Noah and Éric Cantona had also signed an appeal in 2017 to demand justice.
An all-terrain fight denounced by the lawyer for the gendarmes placed in this case under the intermediate status of assisted witnesses. "The opposing party is conducting a media investigation and wants to play the opinion against the file," Rodolphe Bosselut told L'Express in April 2019. A fight that could still last for many months.
