French police officers given suspended jail terms for brutal arrest
A French court on Friday gave suspended jail sentences to three police officers whose violent arrest of Théo Luhaka, a black man, in the Paris suburbs left him with irreversible rectal injuries.
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Policeman Marc-Antoine Castelain – who was found guilty of a truncheon blow that seriously injured Luhaka during the incident in 2017 – received a 12-month suspended prison sentence.
His colleagues Jeremie Dulin and Tony Hochart received three-month suspended prison sentences for intentional violence.
Castelain was banned from police duty on public roads and carrying a weapon for five years. Dulin and Hochart were banned for two years.
'Huge relief'
Castelain's lawyer, Thibault de Montbrial, described the verdict as a "huge relief", adding: "For the first time the whole of France can see that [Castelain] is not a criminal, as he has always maintained."
Despite dismay from those inside and outside the courtroom in Bobigny, north of Paris, Luhaka's lawyer, Antoine Vey, appeared to welcome the verdict.
"The message is very clear. This assault should not have happened. Théo had no reason to be arrested. The police officers this evening have been punished," he said.
Meanwhile anti-racism group SOS Racisme posted on X: "We pay tribute to Théo's dignity. The sentencing is too light but the truth has triumphed."
Excessive force
Aged 22 at the time, Luhaka suffered severe anal injuries from a police telescopic baton used during a stop and search check in the working class suburb of Aulnay-Sous-Bois, also in the city's north.
CCTV showed police forcing him to the ground and beating him after he resisted the check. His injuries were so bad he needed emergency surgery and was left disabled for life.
"I died that day," Luhaka recently told Le Parisien daily.
The incident, which came just a few months after another young black man, Adama Traoré, died in police custody, prompted rioting and demonstrations in a number of city suburbs in France.
Police denials
Castelain, 34, was initially accused of aggravated rape but was instead tried on the lesser charge of "assault with a weapon leading to permanent injury or mutilation".
He denied the allegations, and maintained he was targeting Luhaka's legs.
Dulin, 42, and Hochart, 31, were tried for deliberate violence with agggravating circumstances.
Charges against a fourth officer who witnessed the violent arrest were dropped.
In 2020 an enquiry by the internal police watchdog (IGPN) found a "disproportionate use of force and a failure in the duty to protect a person held by the police".
The IGPN report stated the two baton blows had been delivered when "Théo Luhaka was posing no physical threat to the police carrying out the arrest".
An investigation by France's independent rights defender in November that year called for the policemen to be punished.
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