In the trial of the Théo case, named after this young black man who was seriously injured in the anus during his arrest in February 2017, in a housing estate in Aulnay-sous-Bois, the verdict was reached. The three police officers, prosecuted for intentional violence, were sentenced this Friday, January 19 to suspended prison sentences of 3 to 12 months at the Seine-Saint-Denis assizes.
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After more than nine hours of deliberation, peacekeeper Marc-Antoine Castelain was found guilty of the baton blow which seriously injured the victim. He was sentenced to 12 months in prison and banned from practicing on public roads for 5 years. Suspended prison sentences of 3 months were handed down against his colleagues Jérémie Dulin and Tony Hochart for intentional violence.
Théo, aged 22 at the time of the events, was assaulted during an identity check in Aulnay-sous-Bois
(Seine-Saint-Denis) in February 2017, and seriously injured in the anus. The arrest was filmed by the city’s surveillance cameras. The broadcast of the video on social networks sparked a wave of national indignation and provoked several nights of urban riots.
The sentences requested by the Advocate General during this trial were much lower than those that the three accused could face: up to 7, 10 and 15 years in prison. The magistrate was well aware of this. He had also addressed Théo Luhaka before making his requisitions. “ You may think that these sentences are trivial. “, he told her. But he justified, it takes a “peine fair, not a sentence of revenge “. The three police officers had no criminal record.
“ The police did not come to check us, but to beat us up »
Théo had the floor last Monday. On the stand, he recounted this February 2, 2017 where he had to meet a friend of his sister, when he saw police officers carrying out an identity check in a very violent manner, according to him. He then intervenes to defend “ a little one from the neighborhood ”, and then everything goes wrong. “ The police did not come to check us, but to beat us up “, he assures. “ I died that day “.
His injury and all the consequences that handicap him on a daily basis plunged him into a deep depression. The one who dreamed of being a great footballer, who had signed a contract with a Belgian club, spends his days at home watching series. He doesn’t even have the strength to seek treatment.
Théo is 29 years old today. Despite the very serious after-effects he has – he suffers from incontinence – he came to the trial every day. He was supported by his family, but also by other victims of police violence, like Nahel’s mother, this teenager killed last summer by a police officer or even Michel Zecler, the music producer beaten up in 2020.
The police pleaded self-defense
Opposite, the police pleaded self-defense. According to Marc-Antoine Castelain, the main accused, Théo got involved in a control that did not concern him, and refused to let himself be handcuffed by showing enormous violence. It was to protect his colleague, who had fallen to the ground under the young man while trying to challenge him, that he hit him with a baton. Regulatory, proportionate blows, he insists. For the rest, apart from a slap, he doesn’t recognize anything. He did not insult Théo, did not hit him away from the video surveillance cameras, nor in the car during the journey to the police station. The version was also supported by the two other police officers.
The young man said before this verdict that the sentence did not matter to him. That all that mattered to him was that the police officers were convicted and above all that the truth was reestablished. Let the justice system recognize that he did nothing wrong that day: he was not dealing drugs and he was the victim.
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