![Three woman hold banners demanding 'justice [for] Theo'](https://media.guim.co.uk/45063dee9ced8a9c49129af87313f40b41bb4aa2/0_474_7853_4712/1000.jpg)
Three police officers have been given suspended jail sentences for assaulting a young footballer during an arrest in 2017 in a case that has thrown the spotlight on police violence and racism in France.
The decision not to send the officers to prison sparked angry protests in Paris on Friday.
Théodore Luhaka was talking to friends on his housing estate in the Paris suburb of Aulnay-sous-Bois in February 2017 when he was stopped by police carrying out identity checks.
The officers then sprayed him with teargas, beat him around the face and body and caused him serious injuries after perforating his anus with an extendable police baton leaving him incontinent. The beating lasted eight minutes and was captured on video.
The case led to several nights of unrest and protests in France. The then Socialist president, François Hollande, visited Luhaka in hospital and a number of well-known figures, including actors Omar Sy and Vincent Cassel, publicly supported the young man and criticised the police.
Two of the three officers, all of whom are still working for the police in desk jobs, were charged with aggravated voluntary violence. A third, Marc-Antoine Castelain, was accused of voluntary violence leading to permanent injury.
Castelain was given a one-year suspended prison sentence. He was banned from public police duties for five years.
The judges at the criminal court of Seine-Saint-Denis in the Paris suburb of Bobigny ruled on Friday that the injury caused to Luhaka could not be considered a permanent disability. Rape charges initially brought against Castelain were dropped before the trial.
Two other officers, Jérémie Dulin and Tony Hochart, who were found to have hit Luhaka during his arrest, were each given three months suspended sentences and banned from public police duties for two years.
The three officers claimed they were acting in self-defence. Their lawyers told the court that the use of force was legitimate, necessary and proportionate. Castelain’s lawyer said that accusations of racism against his client were unfounded.
Luhaka, now 29, was a young sports mentor at the time of the attack and was due to start a career as a professional footballer in Belgium. After the attack he gave up football, moved neighbourhood and now lives with his mother, rarely going out.
Before the trial, he told Le Parisien: “I died that day.” He told reporters before the verdict that the length of the sentence did not matter to him as long as the officers were found guilty and that the truth was told.
The prosecutor Loïc Pageot had sought a three-year suspended prison sentence for Castelain and judged Luhaka’s injury to be a permanent disability. He sought shorter suspended prison sentences for the other two officers.
“We need a police that protects us, not police officers like these who employ gratuitous violence,” he told the court on Thursday, describing the violence as unnecessary and “vengeful” as Luhaka did not pose an immediate threat.
After the trial, Luhaka’s lawyer, Antoine Vey, said the verdict was a “victory” that confirms that “Theo was a victim and did nothing to justify being arrested”.
However, angry protesters at the courthouse shouted for police to serve prison sentences. “It is a masquerade to have a suspended for mutilating Theo for life,” Samia El Khalfaoui, one of the protesters, whose brother Souheil was killed by a police officer in 2021, said.
Most cases against police officers for voluntary violence are dismissed before reaching trial in France, and in 2021 less than 15% of guilty judgments resulted in actual jail time served, official data shows.
Reuters contributed to this report
