PARIS: An investigation into the death of a young black man in French police custody found that the tactics used to overpower him played a hand in his death from heatstroke, according to a report seen by AFP on Monday.
The report, from four Belgian doctors commissioned by investigating magistrates, said the way officers pinned Adama Traore to the floor had likely contributed to his death during a heatwave.
Traore, dubbed the “French George Floyd” after the black American killed by US police in 2020, has become one of the faces of a growing campaign to end police brutality in France.
He died on July 19, 2016, at the age of 24 after fleeing officers who wanted to check his ID in Beaumont-sur-Oise north of Paris. After a chase he was traced to an apartment where three officers jumped on him to handcuff him.
One of the officers later said he had complained that he could not breathe — an admission that later drew comparisons with Floyd’s May 2020 death in a chokehold in the US city of Minneapolis.
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