

The truncheon blow inflicted on Théodore Luhaka during an identity check in a Paris suburb that got out of hand on February 2, 2017, was illegitimate police violence, a court ruled on Friday, January 19. The 29-year-old, who suffered serious injuries to his anus, is still suffering the consequences of a blow that has been talked about for almost seven years. The perpetrating police officer had first been charged with rape, though that charge was later dropped. But the blow, the video of which was played on repeat and dissected frame by frame at the hearings, had no justification, the court decided.
The perpetrator, police officer Marc-Antoine Castelain, was sentenced Friday, January 19, by a criminal court to a one-year suspended prison sentence and a five-year ban on carrying a weapon and being deployed on the ground. He was already no longer working in the field, and now faces, like all convicted police officers, expulsion from the force.
"The use of the telescopic defense baton by Marc-Antoine Castelain to arrest Théodore Luhaka was necessary and legitimate, as the latter was opposing his arrest with all his might," reads the court document explaining the verdict. And the stabbing gesture performed by the police officer, although it did not reach the desired area, was "in line with the techniques taught at the police academy," states the document. However, the blow was delivered "while Théodore Luhaka was in a position where there was no danger to the police officers."
Castelain's defense put forward two arguments which, if one or the other had been accepted by the court, would have led to an acquittal. The first argument was that the act had been carried out in "legitimate defense of others," in this case another police officer, Jérémie Dulin, who was on the ground at Théo's feet at the time. "The court was unable to establish, after numerous video viewings, that Dulin was in a situation of danger likely to harm his physical integrity."
The second argument was that the blow was "strictly necessary and proportionate to enable the arrest of a person in rebellion." The judges and jurors were not convinced, "particularly in view of the numerical superiority of the police officers and Théodore Luhaka's position facing the low wall, with his back to them." As a preamble to its reasoning, the court stated that "the use of force is legitimate only if it is proportionate to the aim to be achieved." Here, this was not the case.
However, the court ruled that Luhaka, widely known as just "Théo" since the act of violence was put in the national spotlight, was not afflicted by a "permanent disability." The young man now suffers from what is described as irreversible gas incontinence due to the truncheon blow. But the court, at the end of a tortuous medical-legal reasoning, said it was "not convinced that the organic lesions presented by Luhaka, despite their particularly serious nature, have resulted in the irremediable deprivation of the use of his organic faculties, going beyond mere discomfort or impairment, even if permanent, such as gas incontinence."
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