A police disciplinary board in France is reported to have recommended that two officers involved in the violent arrest of a young black man, who was allegedly sexually assaulted with a truncheon, be let off with a reprimand, reports The Guardian.
Théo Luhaka, who was 22 at the time of the attack, was left permanently disabled after suffering severe anal injuries from a police telescopic baton during a stop-and-search operation in a Paris suburb.
The police disciplinary committee met this week and is said to have ignored an official report accusing the officers of “disproportionate actions”. Le Parisien newspaper claimed the city’s police prefect, Didier Lallement, considered the recommendation that the officers escape with a reprimand “a bit light”.
The suggested disciplinary action has been sent to the director of the national police, who will make the final decision.
The case has become symbolic in the ongoing debate in France about police violence. A lengthy investigation carried out separately to the police internal disciplinary procedure made the unusual decision to send three officers to criminal trial.
One officer was initially accused of aggravated rape but will be tried on a lesser charge of “assault with a weapon leading to permanent injury or mutilation”.
He denies the allegations, saying he aimed his baton at Luhaka’s legs. Two other officers are accused of “deliberate group violence”. Charges against a fourth police officer who witnessed the arrest have been dropped.
In February 2017, four officers turned up at a housing estate in Aulnay-sous-Bois, north of Paris, and began stopping youths and asking to see their identity papers. CCTV footage showed police forcing Luhaka, who had no criminal record, to the ground and beating him.
One officer reportedly forced an extendible baton into the young man’s anus, causing such serious injuries that he needed emergency surgery and has been left with a permanent, life-changing disability.
The incident led to riots, demonstrations, looting and torching of cars in Paris, several city suburbs and elsewhere in France.
Éric Dupond-Moretti, the Luhaka family’s lawyer at the time and now France’s justice minister – said then that it was “an exceptionally serious case”. “There was blood everywhere,” he told France Inter radio.
At the time, Bruno Beschizza, the rightwing mayor of Aulnay-sous-bois, said it was an “unbearable and unacceptable” incident.