The death in July 2016 of Adama Traoré was caused by "heat stroke", "aggravated" by the immobilization and handcuffing maneuvers of the gendarmes and, to a "lesser extent", by his medical history.
This is the conclusion of a new legal expert opinion consulted on Monday by AFP.
Highly anticipated in this dossier, which has become a symbol of the debate on police violence, this new report drawn up by four Belgian doctors, unveiled by L'Obs, was ordered in July by the Parisian examining magistrates in charge of the investigation.
At the origin of this request: medical reports, filed by the family of the young man, contradicting the justice experts who exonerated the police.
For the first time, the conclusions of a report commissioned by the courts join those of the experts appointed by the family.
An endless battle of expertise
On July 19, 2016, Adama Traoré died in the gendarmes barracks of Persan (Val-d'Oise), nearly two hours after his arrest in his town of Beaumont-sur-Oise and at the end of a chase after to have escaped a first arrest.
This issue returned to the media front in the spring, following the death in the United States of George Floyd.
On the judicial front, he turned into a battle of doctors, after a first closure of the file at the end of 2018.
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Event in tribute to Adama Traoré in summer 2020
The investigating judges in charge of the case had ordered a new expertise (the third in the case).
Unveiled on May 29, she concludes that Adama Traoré "did not die of positional asphyxia, but of cardiogenic edema".
Enough to remove the responsibility of the gendarmes by pointing out cardiac and pulmonary pathologies as well as the context of intense stress and physical effort.
Four days later, this Tuesday, June 3, the family replied by adding a new private expertise to the file.
The doctor, this time, retained "a positional asphyxia induced by the ventral plating".
The role of ventral tackle in death "cannot be ruled out"
For the Belgian doctors of this new study, "the elements of the file do not meet the medico-legal criteria recognized of a positional asphyxia".
"On the other hand, the intervention in the lethal process of a period of asphyxia" by physical constraint "cannot be ruled out", write the experts, thus evoking the gestures of arrest of the gendarmes.
"The pejorative evolution" of this state "was unusually fast but remains plausible due in particular to the contribution to hypoxia (lack of oxygen in the blood, Editor's note) of momentary maneuvers of constraint and to a lesser extent of underlying disease states ”.
Adama Traoré suffered from a genetic disease, sickle cell anemia, associated with a rare pathology, sarcoidosis.
"The regulatory gestures made by the three gendarmes were made with regard to the rebellion of Adama Traoré", their lawyers reaffirmed Monday, Mes Rodolphe Bosselut, Pascal Rouiller and Sandra Chirac Kollarik.
"These three agents were in the most complete ignorance of the medical history of this man and of what could have happened physiologically to him" before their arrival on the scene, their statement continues to AFP.
The lawyer for the Traoré family, contacted by AFP, did not wish to react.