Three police officers have been found guilty of manslaughter over the death of a Black man in Paris in 2015 and sentenced each to a 15-month suspended jail term, a judge said today.
Amadou Koume, 33, died after he was pinned to the ground by officers in a bar, put in a chokehold and subsequently left on his front- while his hands cuffed behind his back- for more than six minutes.
Koume died as the result of a slow “mechanical asphyxia” according to a medical expert, the court heard during the trial.
His name has become a protest slogan against police violence in some communities in France.
As the judge passed the sentence in the French court today, Eddy Arneton, a lawyer for the Koume family said: “To hear the word ‘guilty’ is satisfying, but the sentence is relatively lenient.”
The prosecutor had sought a one-year suspended sentence, deeming that necessary and proportionate force had been used to immobilise Koume but that the officers were negligent in leaving him on his front.
According to AFP, the magistrate accused the three officers of never checking Koume’s state of health despite the victim’s “psychiatric vulnerability”.
Rights groups say accusations of brutal, racist treatment of residents of often immigrant background by French police remain largely unaddressed, in particular in deprived city suburbs.
In 2020, as public anger swelled over race discrimination following the death of George Floyd after being detained by police in the United States, the French government promised “zero tolerance” for racism within law enforcement agencies.
Police unions responded by accusing the government of scapegoating it for deep-rooted divisions in French society.
