A police officer responsible for monitoring the Toulouse-Cornebarrieu Administrative Detention Center (Haute-Garonne) was given a four-month suspended prison sentence on December 22 for brutalizing a young migrant, notably pushing his thumbs into his eye sockets, according to information from the media StreetPress, confirmed to Le Parisien by the victim's lawyer.
The CRAs, places of detention of foreigners awaiting expulsion, regularly attract attention.
The latest news linked to these centers is the escape on Christmas Eve of eleven detainees from the CRA in Vincennes (Val-de-Marne).
Betrayed by CCTV cameras
The alleged facts date back to the evening of November 24, 2022, according to our colleagues.
CCTV footage from that evening shows two police officers taking the victim - a 22-year-old Libyan - aside in the corridors of the CRA.
One of them then stuck his thumbs in his eye sockets according to the information site which published photos of the scene from the center's video surveillance cameras.
The scene lasts only a handful of seconds but is violent enough to cause "a 2 mm hemorrhagic pocket" in the victim's left eye, according to a medical report consulted by StreetPress.
In September 2018, a migrant killed himself by hanging in the same administrative detention center.
“There are too many people in this center: the police are overwhelmed, everyone is overwhelmed,” said at the time the association “The Circle of Neighbors of the Cornebarrieu Center”, which helps those detained.