Hundreds of people on Monday marched in a Paris suburb to show support for a young black man who authorities allege was sodomized by a police officer’s baton last week during a police operation that targeted drug traffickers.
One officer was charged on Sunday with aggravated rape and three others were charged with aggravated assault.
French Minister of the Interior Bruno Le Roux suspended the four officers, saying the facts surrounding their arrest of the 22-year-old man during an identity check must be established “very clearly and with no ambiguity.”
The incident allegedly occurred in a neighborhood with a large minority population in the city of Aulnay-sous-Bois, east of Paris, and a crowd turned out there to march in support of the alleged victim.
“The feeling of humiliation is felt by people,” said Abdallah Benjana, a former deputy mayor who lives in the neighborhood.
“What are they seeking?” he said of the officers. “To provoke a spark? Isn’t there enough gunpowder in those neighborhoods? Unemployment, insecurity, high rents ... no perspectives for future. They do that to a young man, it can only explode.”
Abdel Adhoure, a 20-year-old resident of the area, said that “every day it’s like that: whenever the police come they carry out abusive checks.”
The man allegedly assaulted by the officers told his story to BFM TV on Monday.
Speaking in an audio interview, he said the officers hit him and peppered him with racist insults.
At one point, one of the officers took his baton and “he drove it into my buttocks,” he said.
A lawyer for the officer charged with rape said that any injury inflicted was done accidentally.
Eric Dupond-Moretti, a lawyer representing the alleged victim, told Europe 1 radio that his client underwent emergency surgery for a “deep anal tear” and had been hospitalized since.
The attorney said the case is “exceptionally serious” and he called on judicial authorities to treat the officer as any other suspected rapist would be.
French law defines a rape as any act of sexual penetration of any kind, committed by violence, coercion, threat or surprise.
When an alleged offender has an authority of law over the victim, a conviction can bring up to 20 years in prison.
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