Talk:Death of Adama Traoré

Positioning of facts about Traoré's criminal background
I have moved the details of AT's criminal background to a lower position in 'Arrest and death'. In the absence of evidence that this criminal background was relevant to the events described (eg. the police approached the brothers BECAUSE of AT's background), these details do not warrant their previously prominent position in the narrative. Placing them upfront carries the risk of biasing the reader against Adama.Zedembee (talk) 09:39, 20 September 2020 (UTC)


 * I agree that the information about Traoré's criminal background should not be above the most newsworthy matters (his arrest and death). However, placing it within the "Arrest and death" section seems less appropriate and less understandable than giving it a section of its own. I propose that a new section labeled something like "Prior criminal activity" be added between "Post-mortem reports" and "Aftermath", to distinguish it from those sections. Bricology (talk) 19:53, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Didnt they arrest homeboy because his brother was a piece of shit violent criminal and he refused to identify himself? How is that not relevant information SverreTiger (talk) 07:14, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
 * It's a good thing. The past of a racialized victim is generally used by the French Far-right Politics in order to make the victim appear as the culprit and the murderers as vigilantes or even victims : the guilt reversal technique (a recent example).
 * As you indicate: "the absence of evidence that this criminal background was relevant to the events described". That, together with attempts to reverse guilt, the victim's past should be removed from an article that discusses his probable homicide (the part that discusses "Post-mortem reports" is outdated; the last medical report mentioned in the article has been rendered and concludes that the death was caused by the intervention of the police). In general, any element aimed at making the victim guilty, without a direct link to his death, should be suspected of reversal of guilt. For example how the sentence "After his death Traoré was found to have been in possession of €1,330 in cash and a bag of cannabis." directly related to his death? Isn't it a question of suggesting that the victim was a dealer (possession of cannabis is still illegal in France) and of trying to reverse the guilt? Ssirdeck (talk) 10:13, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

Make it clear that these are testimonials and not facts.
Unlike the death of George Floyd or, more recently, young Nahel, Adama Traoré's death was not filmed. The sequence of events surrounding his death is based on testimonies and medical expertise. It seems important to specify this. The testimonies and expertise being contradictory, perhaps it would be better suited to separate them (much like what Ridley Scott does in his film The Last Duel). This is particularly important when we know that the majority of testimonies come from the police, the same ones who are suspected of homicide in this case. It is important to keep the testimony of the suspects (especially since there are not many others) but it is still necessary to specify it.

An example of contradiction :

One of the policeman said: “We immediately put him in semi-prone". Another corroborates: “We put him on the ground, in semi-prone on the right side."

A firefighter who arrived on the scene to examine the victim indicates that the victim "''is face down on the ground, on his stomach, hands behind his back in handcuffs. He is on a ground which is a small square of concrete outside in the courtyard of squad". "I see the victim is out of ventilation. I again ask the policeman a second time to remove the handcuffs in order to begin cardiac massage.''"

There are few testimonials:

- The police (suspected of being the cause of Traoré's death)

- Bagui Traoé (He was there when the police arrived and he saw his brother on the ground in the courtyard of the gendarmerie when he got there)

- The witnesses during the chase and the arrest (2 identified)

- Rescuers trying to resuscitate the victim

On the other hand, the expertise is very numerous:

- Autopsy 1: dismisses the responsibility of the police (pathological cause)

- Autopsy 2: does not decide (Asphyxiation without determining the cause)

- Expertise 2016: dismisses the responsibility of the police

- Expertise 2017 (after change of venue and the professional transfer of the Attorney General): The responsibility of the police cannot be dismissed

- Expertise 2018: dismisses the responsibility of the police

Closing of the instruction.

- counter-expertise financed by the family in 2019: The responsibility of the police is engaged with the probable cause of asphyxiation from sustained pressure applied by the police.

- New judicial expertise after resumption of the investigation in 2019: dismisses the asphyxiation; This expertise is canceled for defect of procedure.

- New counter-expertise financed by the family in 2020: Concluded in asphyxiation from sustained pressure applied by the police

- The judges are asking for a new second opinion in 2020 from four Belgian medical professors: The death is said to be linked to the combination of asphyxiation from sustained pressure applied by the police, heat stroke and, to a lesser extent, a pathological condition; Without the intervention of the police, the death would not have occurred. Ssirdeck (talk) 10:22, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

Context : the awakening of French racism
The very long series of expertise and counter-expertise aimed at clarifying the death of Adama Traoré may leave a person unfamiliar with the racist context in France perplexed.

Editors should get a sense of the context that has seen Far-right Politics ideas spread in unprecedented ways in France since its liberation from Nazism in 1945.

France is a former colonial and slave country. The settlers repatriated to metropolitan France during decolonization in the second half of the 20th century are particularly racist. If there is no longer any difference between whites and "non-whites" in law in France, discrimination remains massive, in particular before the courts and the police.

A political party founded by a former Waffen-SS, a former militiaman, and a former torturer has reached the second rounds in the last two presidential elections in France. The current President of the Republic has paid an official tribute to Philippe Pétain by giving him back his title of Marshal, which was withdrawn from him by the courts following his conviction for crimes against humanity (For having ordered the mass deportation of Jews to the death camps).

Mainstream media are owned by a few wealthy people or by the state; it naturally defends the maintenance of the order in place, between hyperbolization of the violence of the populations and Euphemization of the violence of the police. One of these great fortunes (Bolloré) regularly buys major media to disseminate racist, sexist, homophobic ideas in a nostalgia for a Catholic and Colonial France.

The mainstream French press is therefore a source of information that takes the side of the police by not hesitating, as we have seen previously, to use the technique of inversion of guilt.

We will then be very critical of sources based on media that have already been convicted of racist remarks by the courts or that employ people who have already been convicted.

Ssirdeck (talk) 11:40, 13 August 2023 (UTC)