Death of Adam and Raihane: intellectuals, including Annie Ernaux, lambast the slow pace of justice
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In an op-ed published today, intellectuals including Annie Ernaux and Patrick Chamoiseau question the slow pace of the judicial investigation into the Adam and Raihane case.
On the night of 18 August 2022, Adam B., 20, and Raihane S., 26, were killed by eleven shots fired by a police officer while they were in the car park of a hypermarket in Vénissieux, in a stolen car. More than three years after their deaths, the judicial investigation is still ongoing.
That slowness raises questions, as the signatories of the op-ed write – among them Nobel laureate Annie Ernaux, Goncourt Prize winner Patrick Chamoiseau, and Oscar-winning screenwriter Arthur Harari. “Why is the procedure that is supposed to deliver this justice taking so long (already more than 3 years)? Why have requests to hear witnesses been refused (appeal proceedings lengthen the judicial investigation)? Why do numerous contradictions in the expert reports remain unexplained? Why has a video that was not handed over in full to the defence surfaced three years later?” reads the text published today on Mediapart. In April 2024, a similar op-ed had appeared in the daily Libération, calling for support for “the civil parties in their quest for justice”.
On 11 March 2024, Index published a counter-expertise report on the circumstances of the deaths of Adam B. and Raihane S., in which the NGO highlighted the contradictions between the police account of events and the available physical evidence, and raised serious doubts about the objectivity of the ballistics expert report produced in the course of the proceedings.