A turnaround.
Three police officers, convicted at first instance for violence against two adolescents in Paris in 2014 and 2015, were released on appeal, we learned Monday from a judicial source.
The three men, members of the 12th arrondissement neighborhood support Brigade, received a five-month suspended prison sentence in April 2018 for violence committed against a boy and a girl.
Now aged 37, 41 and 43, they were released Friday by the Paris Court of Appeal, whose motives were not known on Monday.
"We are really very surprised" by this decision, reacted Me Slim Ben Achour, lawyer of the civil parties, citing the "hard requisitions" of the prosecution at the trial.
“It is also the expression of the difficulty of convicting police officers for police violence.
But the fight continues, ”he added.
"The judicial institution does not like to be instrumentalized"
The defense considered that "in this case, justice is finally done for these police officers wrongly accused".
"The judiciary does not like to be used for political ends," Jérôme Andréi told AFP.
The young complainant, Yassine, accused one of the police officers of having slapped him after having brought him "for no reason" to the police station and another of having struck him in the face six months later.
Julie, 14 at the time of the incident in July 2015, recounted being sprayed with tear gas and hit in the thigh with a baton.
The police intervened because young people were listening to music at a high volume on the public highway.
A case much broader than this single case
At first instance, the court ruled that “the use of force was illegitimate”, stressing that the police, who worked “in a so-called
sensitive area
”, “had to behave flawlessly”.
The case originated from a collective complaint of December 17, 2015, targeting eleven police officers and in which 18 minors and young adults denounced a set of 44 facts.
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Of these, seventeen took the State to court in a separate civil procedure.
Minors at the time of the facts and all of North African or African origin, they denounce verbal, physical and sexual assault during identity checks, arbitrary arrests and kidnappings or discrimination.
In this component, a hearing took place on September 30 and the decision is due on Wednesday.