Three police officers on trial in Nice for racist insults and psychological violence against two Tunisian drug traffickers were sentenced Monday, November 10, to twelve months’ probation and a six-month ban from carrying out their duties.
Two other police officers, who were also tried by a criminal court, were acquitted. Prosecutors had asked for sentences of twelve to eighteen months in prison and permanent work bans for the five civil servants.
Laurent Martin de Frémont, department secretary of the police union Un1té, expressed his opinion “relieved”. He came, like other police officers, to support his charged colleagues. “It’s not just offenders who deserve a second chance”excited Eric Borghini, lawyer for one of them. Those who have been suspended since the incident must undergo internal administrative procedures before they can be readmitted.
On July 22, police arrested two young men suspected of drug trafficking in the sensitive district of Moulins, west of Nice, and put them in a van. Secretly, one of the young people had activated the dictaphone on his cellphone, recording insults, taunts, violence and insults of a racist nature.
The lawyer for the 18-year-old Tunisian teenager, Kada Sadouni, expressed his disappointment after the verdict: “I honestly think the courts will take this matter more seriously and give the police officers the punishment they deserve. »
“Reality on the ground”
Investigators discovered the recording upon arrival at the police station. “There are words we shouldn’t say” recognized Mr. Martin de Frémont, but “There is the reality on the ground. You are dealing with police officers who face hardships like this every day, who are spat at, insulted.”he added, convinced that the young Tunisian had led the police into a mistake.
Sentenced to eighteen months in prison for gang theft, the young man accused the police of tearing pages of the Koran from his bag and making them into balls to put in his mouth. The three police officers who were in the back of the van assured that it was a notebook found in the trash and that they just wanted it “bad joke”. For the court, psychological violence is a form of violence, but not physical violence. Based on medical information, the young man’s bruises may have been caused by a fall during arrest or due to self-injury while in police custody, and he admitted this.
The two released police officers were at the front of the van and assured that they were unaware of their colleagues’ actions. The three convicts, aged 30, 32 and 41, must each pay a fine of 500 euros and jointly pay compensation of 1,000 euros to the young man, one symbolic euro to the Human Rights League and Licra, as well as legal costs of 800 euros to the three civil parties. The second person arrested was not a civilian party.
