Death of Adama Traoré: the Court of Cassation upholds the dismissal of the case
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After nearly ten years of proceedings, the Court of Cassation, France’s highest court, on Wednesday 11 February definitively upheld the dismissal of the case (non-lieu) against the three gendarmes under investigation over the death of Adama Traoré on 19 July 2016 in Persan (Val-d’Oise).
The 24-year-old had been arrested by the gendarmes before falling ill during his transfer to the gendarmerie station, where he died shortly before 8 pm in the barracks courtyard. According to statements made by one of the gendarmes when questioned, Adama Traoré had borne “the weight of their three bodies” during the prone restraint used to handcuff him, and had said he was “having trouble breathing” on the way to the gendarmerie station. The court-ordered expert reports relied on by the investigating judges pointed instead to other causes, notably pre-existing medical conditions – an analysis his family and their own experts fiercely contested.
The proceedings were long and contentious. It took two years for the gendarmes to be granted assisted witness status (a status short of formal investigation) in 2018, and seven for a first dismissal (2023), upheld on appeal in May 2024. Over the course of the investigation, expert reports contradicted one another. In 2020, a video investigation by Le Monde and Forensic Architecture – carried out during Index’s incubation phase – had identified several contradictions in the gendarmes’ account of events, but this did not alter the outcome of the investigation.
Following this ruling by the Court of Cassation, the family’s lawyer, Yassine Bouzrou, announced his intention to bring the case before the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), arguing that the right to life guaranteed by the European Convention had not been respected.