Twenty-four hours after his tough arrest during the banned demonstration in memory of his brother Adama, who died after an arrest in 2016, Yssoufou Traoré was released from the hospital at midday on Sunday July 9.
Yssoufou Traoré, 29, appears with his right eye swollen and the sleeve of his t-shirt torn in a video posted early this afternoon on Twitter by the account “The truth for Adama”.
According to this account, authenticated by Agence France-Presse (AFP), the ventral tackle he suffered during his arrest caused him “a broken nose, head trauma with eye contusion, thoracic, abdominal and revealing back pain”. The Adama committee, which manages this account, says it will file a complaint this Sunday “to denounce this serious violence”.
His lawyer Yassine Bouzrou confirmed earlier that he had spent the night in hospital but had no information on his state of health. He also clarified that he had not been able to speak with his client.
According to a source familiar with the matter, Yssoufou Traoré was accused of having “dealed a blow” to a police commissioner at the start of the rally, place de la République.
The images of his arrest filmed by several witnesses – we see him resisting and then being tackled and held face to the ground by several police officers, one of them resting his two knees on his back – provoked convictions from several left-wing elected officials on social networks. ” It’s a shame. There was no reason. Everything was going very well, ”tweeted Sandrine Rousseau in particular. “One more persecution for the Traoré family,” lamented Eric Coquerel.
His police custody, for violence against a person holding public authority and rebellion, was lifted due to his hospitalization, according to the Paris prosecutor’s office, which did not give any information on his state of health. At this stage, the rest of the procedure is not known.
Contacted by AFP, her sister Assa, a figure in the fight against police violence, said she was going with Yssoufou Traoré to the 5th arrondissement police station to collect her belongings.
Two thousand people gathered in Paris
Despite the ban from the Prefecture of Police, around 2,000 people gathered in Paris on Saturday, behind Assa Traoré, a figure in the fight against police violence, in memory of his brother Adama, who died shortly after his arrest by gendarmes, in July 2016.
The associations, unions and political parties classified on the left (among which LFI, EELV, CGT and Solidaires) at the origin of the “citizen marches” against the police violence organized the day before in France, demanded in a press release on Sunday the “freedom without condition nor prosecution”, of Yssoufou Traoré and a second man, “an activist in working-class neighborhoods for a long time”, also arrested during the Paris rally.
The press release called for “massive” mobilization on Sunday afternoon in front of the police station in the 1st arrondissement of Paris, where this second man is in police custody, according to Eric Coquerel. The rally to demand his release ended peacefully after two hours. About fifty people took part, including LFI deputies Eric Coquerel, Jérôme Legavre and Thomas Portes, and were joined by Yssoufou and Assa Traoré. “It is an injustice that I suffered”, judged Mr. Traoré, claiming to have received a “much wanted uppercut”. “They [the police] don’t have to do that,” he added.
The second man also arrested came out free on Sunday late afternoon, the Adama Committee announced to AFP. He was summoned at a later date before the prosecutor’s delegate for a probationary criminal warning, the Paris prosecutor’s office said in the evening. As for Youssouf Traoré, 29, “the investigation is continuing,” said the prosecution.
The organizations are also calling for the abandonment of the legal proceedings announced by the Prefecture of Police against Assa Traoré, “organizer” of the banned Parisian gathering, according to the authorities.
“This call for mobilization was widely supported by trade unions, associations and politicians. Therefore, the responsibility lies with everyone. We will not let ourselves be done, “is it also written in the press release, which calls for a new” broad mobilization “against police violence, Saturday July 15 in Paris.
On the images filmed by witnesses at the end of the Parisian rally on Saturday, which took place calmly according to journalists from Agence France-Presse, we also see a woman being violently thrown to the ground by a police officer. Journalists such as Pierre Tremblay, from HuffPost, Clément Lanot, freelance journalist, and Florian Poitout, photoreporter, have also denounced on social networks, with supporting image evidence, having been violently repelled by the police while covering these arrests, when they were fully identifiable.
One of them announced his intention to seize the IGPN, the “police of the police”, to file a complaint against two police officers from the BRAV-M, the brigade for the repression of violent motorcycling action. On Sunday, the police headquarters announced the opening of an administrative investigation to shed light on the violence committed by the police against several journalists.
“The fatigue of the police forces does not excuse this repeated violence against journalists. We don’t put our nerves on reporters (and no longer on demonstrators), ”reporters without borders secretary general Christophe Deloire tweeted on Saturday.