The agents have been sentenced to 15 months in prison with a suspended sentence for involuntary manslaughter by performing two strangulation keys on the individual in order to reduce it
The Paris correctional court on Tuesday sentenced three French police officers to 15 months in prison with a suspended sentence for involuntary manslaughter after the 2015 death of Amadou Koumé by “slow mechanical suffocation” during a violent arrest. The arresting officers put him in two chokeholds in order to reduce him.
Although the sentence is light, “hearing the word guilty, naturally, is a satisfaction in a case like this,” said Eddy Arneton, the family’s lawyer, in statements to the French press after learning of the ruling. Convicted police officers have ten days to appeal.
Seven years ago, Amadou Koumé, a 33-year-old family man of Senegalese origin, suffered an attack of dementia in a Paris bar. The person in charge of the premises notified the security forces, since the individual had consumed cocaine, did not speak coherently, was aggressive and was scaring the clients.
The first agents who came to the bar could not control Koumé, who was 1.90 m tall and weighed 107 kilos. Other police reinforcements arrived. They arrested him using force. They put him in two chokeholds to reduce him and kept him on the floor on his stomach for more than six minutes with his hands handcuffed behind his back. Koumé passed away on the night of March 5-6, 2015 at the police station to which he was transferred after his arrest.
According to the coroner who performed the autopsy, Koumé died from “major pulmonary edema, resulting from the association of mechanical asphyxia due to cervical and laryngeal trauma and cocaine intoxication.”
“A victory”
Haby Koumé, sister of the deceased, explained in statements to the France 3 network that the Police at first told them only that Amadou had died after suffering “uneasiness.” Haby considered “a victory” the conviction of the three policemen and that “the truth” of what happened that night has finally been known.
Amadou Koumé became one of the symbols of police violence in France after his death, along with Adama Traoré, a 24-year-old man of Malian origin who died in 2016 after being arrested by gendarmes, who made a ventral tackle. The French police officially stopped using the controversial choke hold to immobilize detainees in July 2021 and replaced it with other less violent techniques.
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