Three French police officers are to be prosecuted, accused of trumping up charges against a British aid worker helping migrants in Calais, reports The Guardian.
Tom Ciotkowski, a council worker from Stratford-upon-Avon, was arrested while filming riot police preventing humanitarian volunteers from distributing food to refugees in July 2018.
When the Briton remonstrated with officers over their treatment of another volunteer and asked for an identification number, the officer pushed him violently, making him fall backwards over a concrete security barrier into the ring road around the port, where he was narrowly missed by a passing lorry.
Ciotkowski was then arrested, placed in custody for 36 hours and charged with contempt and assault. He was acquitted last year after a court in Boulogne-sur-Mer was shown video footage of the police officer pushing him.
Three officers from the CRS officers – the French riot police – are now to be sent to trial on criminal charges of forging evidence and one on a charge of violence.
Nicolas Krameyer, the French programme manager for Amnesty International, which supported Ciotkowski through his legal ordeal, welcomed the decision to prosecute.
“With police abuses and the lack of justice for these currently in the spotlight, the news that these three policemen will face prosecution is both timely and welcome,” Krameyer said.
“Before his acquittal, Tom’s case was emblematic of the attacks by police on migrants and refugees and the human rights defenders who support them. Now it will become a test case for how far the authorities are prepared to go to end abuses against human rights defenders,” he added.
At his hearing, the court was told that Ciotkowski had been passing in a vehicle when he spotted police arguing with a group of charity volunteers and stopped to film what was happening. In his statement he said a police officer had kicked a volunteer twice, then hit a female volunteer who was with him with a baton.
When Ciotkowski told the senior police officer: “Do not hit women” and asked for his badge number there was a scuffle. In video footage shown to the court, the police officer is seen pushing a figure over the barrier just as a lorry was passing.
Police claimed it was Ciotkowski, 31, who had “shoved” the officer in the chest and called him a “bitch-bastard”, alleging the officer had pushed back in self-defence. All three police recounted the exact same story, said prosecutors.
Ciotkowski spent 10 months awaiting trial on the charges, for which he faced up to five years in prison and a fine of 7,500 euros (£6,700).