For Assa Traore, here on May 7, 2021, the death of Mahamadou Fofana is not accidental. – AFPTHOMAS SAMSON / AFP
The investigation aimed at establishing the causes of the death of Mahamadou Fofana, presented as Adama Traoré’s cousin by the family and who died in September while he was being pursued by the police in the Yvelines, was closed, has the Versailles prosecutor’s office told AFP on Friday. The filing without follow-up to this investigation, entrusted to an investigating judge, took place on March 30, according to the prosecution requested by AFP, because the investigations “did not allow to establish the existence of a criminal offense ”.
Contacted by AFP, the family lawyer, Yassine Bouzrou, mocked a “no information”, adding that a complaint with the constitution of civil party for “willful violence resulting in death without intention of giving it” had been filed “in September” with the dean of the examining magistrates of Versailles. ” Following [cette] complaint “,” a judicial investigation is still in progress, “assured Me Bouzrou.
The body found in the Seine at Bougival
On September 14, 2020, Mahamadou Fofana died at the age of 35 while police tried to arrest him in the Yvelines. His body had been found in the Seine at Bougival by the police pursuing him. According to the version of the police, no violence was committed and the man would have drowned while trying to return to the shore after trying to escape them. But the family, who saw the body in the morgue, contested this version: Assa Traoré, Adama Traoré’s sister, notably mentioned a “completely deformed skull”.
It is in this context that an investigation into the causes of death was then entrusted to an examining magistrate. Its classification without follow-up is based in particular on “forensic expertise […] confirmed by the counter-autopsy operations requested by the civil party and carried out by a panel of experts, ”said the prosecution. “Hearings”, “findings made on the spot” or an “analysis of radio links” were also conducted before leading to the classification of the complaint, he said.
Mahamadou Fofana is presented by the family as the cousin of Adama Traoré, a young black man of 24 who died in 2016 in controversial circumstances after his arrest by gendarmes in Val-d’Oise. This case found a strong echo in France after the planetary wave of indignation sparked by the death in May 2020 in the United States of George Floyd, a black man killed by a white police officer.