The family of Adama Traoré had seized the investigating chamber of the Paris Court of Appeal, contesting the dismissal order issued on August 30, 2023 in favor of the three gendarmes who had arrested the young black man of 24 years after a chase.
Its public prosecutor's office requested confirmation of the dismissal of the case in favor of the gendarmes, while recognizing "a causal link" between the arrest of Adama Traoré in July 2016 in Beaumont-sur-Oise (Val-d'Oise) and his death, AFP learned this Wednesday from a source close to the matter.
In its requisitions, the general prosecutor's office considers that "the causal link is both established and sufficient to say that the intervention of the police towards Adama Traoré, in the context that the three soldiers described, and with regard to his state of health at the time of this intervention, contributed, even if secondarily, to the occurrence of his death.
Decision on May 16
The hearing took place on February 15 behind closed doors.
“After eight years of judicial bad faith, justice finally recognizes that the violent arrest of the gendarmes caused the death of Adama Traoré,” reacted one of the Traoré family’s lawyers, Maître Yassine Bouzrou.
According to him, “if the investigating chamber respected the law, the gendarmes would be referred to a court to be judged”.
The public prosecutor's office relies on a report, written by four Belgian experts in 2021 and completed in 2022, concluding that the young man's death was caused, on this heatwave day, by a "heat stroke" which would not have caused however “probably” not been fatal without his arrest by the police.
The Belgian experts considered, recalls the general prosecutor's office, that "Adama Traoré, before his arrest, suffered from severe hypoxia and a lethal process was already underway, linked to heatstroke".
According to the experts, underlines the general prosecutor's office, "multiple factors led" to his death and "each of the elements contributing to the death of Adama Traoré, taken in isolation, was not in itself fatal".
The public prosecutor's office requested confirmation of the dismissal of the case, noting "the absence of material element as intentional".
And to add that the soldiers “took the appropriate measures to come to the aid of Adama Traoré in an effective and benevolent manner, “given the knowledge they had of a particularly complex situation”.
The decision will be made on May 16.