In a case that put police brutality and racism in the spotlight in France, three police officers were given suspended prison sentences for assaulting a young soccer player during an arrest in 2017.
The decision not to send the officers to prison sparked angry protests in Paris on Friday.
In February 2017, Théodore Luhaka was talking with a friend in a residential complex in the Paris suburb of Aulnay-sous-Bois when he was stopped by police conducting an identification.
The police then sprayed him with tear gas, hit him in the face and around his body, perforated his anus with a retractable baton and made him incontinent, before seriously injuring him. The assault lasted eight minutes and was captured on video.
The incident sparked several nights of riots and protests in France. Socialist President François Hollande visited Ruhaka in hospital, and many celebrities, including actors Omar Sy and Vincent Cassel, publicly supported him and criticized the police.
Two of the three officers, all of whom still work for the police department in administrative positions, were charged with aggravated voluntary assault. A third person, Marc-Antoine Castellain, was charged with voluntary assault causing permanent injury.
Castelein was sentenced to a one-year suspended prison sentence. He was banned from public service for five years.
A judge at the Seine-Saint-Denis criminal court in the Paris suburb of Bobigny ruled on Friday that the injuries caused to Luhaka cannot be considered permanent disabilities. The rape charge originally brought against Castelein was dropped before trial.
Two other officers found to have punched Ruhaka during the arrest, Jeremy Dulin and Tony Hoshart, were each given three-month suspended sentences and banned from public office for two years.
The three police officers claimed they acted in self-defense. Their lawyers told the court that the use of force was lawful, necessary and proportionate. Castelein's lawyer said the accusations of racism against his client were unfounded.
Ruhaka, now 29, was a young sports coach at the time of the attack and was set to begin his professional soccer career in Belgium. After the attack, he gave up football and moved to a new neighborhood, where he now lives with his mother and rarely goes 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 as long as the officers were found guilty and the truth was told.
Prosecutor Loïc Pageau asked for a suspended three-year prison sentence for Castelein, ruling that Ruhaka's injuries were permanent. He called for the suspended sentences of the two other police officers to be reduced.
“We need police to protect us, not police officers like these who use unprovoked violence,” he said in court Thursday, adding that the violence was uncalled for because Ruhaka posed no immediate threat. He said it was necessary and “revenge.”
After the trial, Ruhaka's lawyer Antoine Vey said the verdict was a “victory” that confirmed “Theo was a victim and did nothing to justify his arrest.” Stated.
However, angry protesters at the court shouted for the police to be given a prison sentence. “Theo's indefinite suspension for his mutilation is a sham,” said Samia El Kalfaoui, one of the protesters whose brother Suhail was killed by police in 2021.
In France, most cases against police officers for voluntary violence are dismissed before they reach trial, and less than 15% of convictions in 2021 actually served a prison sentence, according to official data.
Reuters contributed to this report
