A person holds a portrait of late Adama Traoré during a march calling for answers two years after the 24-year-old man died in police custody, on July 21, 2018, in Beaumont-sur-Oise, northeast of Paris. FRANCOIS GUILLOT / AFP
France's top court on Wednesday, February 11, ruled against reopening an investigation into the 2016 death of a young Black man in police custody, confirming a previous decision to dismiss the case against three arresting officers.
The Court of Cassation's decision definitively closes the case nearly a decade after the death of 24-year-old Adama Traoré following his arrest in the Paris suburb of Beaumont-sur-Oise, a fatality that triggered national outcry over police brutality and racism.
Traoré's family was contesting a 2024 appeal court ruling confirming a prior decision to drop the case, after an investigation led to no charges against the military policemen − or gendarmes − involved and therefore no case in court. A lawyer representing his family announced after Wednesday's ruling that they would take the case to the European Court of Human Rights to "have France convicted."
Three gendarmes pursued the young man on July 19, 2016, when temperatures reached nearly 37°C, pinning him down in an apartment, after which he told officers he was "having trouble breathing." He then fainted during the journey to a gendarmerie station, where he died.
