Gendarmes (Guadeloupe). – no credit
All light will be shed on the circumstances that led to the death of a man two weeks after his arrest last November, assured the public prosecutor in Guadeloupe on Friday, where the recent broadcast of a video arouses excitement. “We have nothing to hide, everything is done to find the elements of answer to bring to the family” of Claude Jean-Pierre, the deceased man, declared the public prosecutor of Basse-Terre, Xavier Sicot, at a press conference.
He was speaking following the broadcast, on The media, Thursday, of images showing part of the road control by gendarmes during which Claude Jean-Pierre, sixty years old from Guadeloupe, fell unconscious, on November 21, 2020 in Deshaies. He died two weeks later at the Pointe-à-Pitre University Hospital. “Five months is certainly a long time for families who are waiting for answers, but we are on investigations which require time”, justified the prosecutor. According to him, the family “has access to the procedure”. A judicial investigation has been open against X for “intentional homicide” since December 10.
The dissemination of the images caused a stir in Guadeloupe, and ignites social networks, where many Internet users compare the death of the man to that of George Floyd, in the United States.
Truth and justice
For Jean-Jacob Bicep, one of the spokespersons of Kolectif Gwadloup Kont Vyolans a Jandam (in Creole, Guadeloupe collective against the violence of the gendarmes), civil party in this case, interviewed by RCI, Thursday, “these images establish the fact that Claude Jean-Pierre died following violence committed by the gendarmes ”. According to The Media, the autopsy report evokes “the dislocation of two cervicals” during the exfiltration of the man from his car. The conclusions of the autopsy “are being completed,” said Xavier Sicot on Friday.
“It is the whole of Guadeloupe which demands truth and justice”, reacted in a press release Josette Borel-Lincertin, president of the Departmental Council, demanding that the investigation shed “all the light on the exact circumstances of the arrest and on the causes of death of Claude Jean-Pierre ”. “I alert you to the urgency that there is to inform us about the consequences of this terrible tragedy and the circumstances which surround it”, for his part wrote the deputy Max Mathiasin Thursday in a letter addressed to the Prime Minister Jean Castex.