PARIS: Three French police officers have been given suspended jail sentences for assaulting a black man with a baton in a north-west Paris suburb, BBC News reported.
One policeman received 12 months suspended and two others three months. Théo Luhaka was left disabled with irreversible anal injuries from a police baton during a stop-and-search in Aulnay-sous-Bois in February 2017.
Mr Luhaka, then 22, also said he was beaten, racially abused and spat on. The case sparked riots and protests in Paris.
Police officer Marc-Antoine Castelain, 34, was found guilty of the baton which seriously injured Mr Luhak and was given a 12-month suspended sentence.
Jeremie Dulin, 42, and Tony Hochart, 31, were given three-month suspended sentences for intentional violence after a trial that began on January 9.
In French law, a suspended sentence means that the offender avoids prison for a certain period of time, unless they commit another crime and fulfill other obligations.
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“I felt as if I had been raped,” Mr Luhaka, now 29, told the Bobigny jury court on Monday.
Video footage of the attack was widely shared on social media, sparking an uproar and prompting then-President Francois Hollande to visit Mr Luhaka in hospital.
Mr. Luhaka was a young sports mentor with no criminal record and hoped to start a professional football career in Belgium.
On the day he was attacked, he said he left his house and happened upon a police identity check aimed at drug dealers.
The police operation turned violent and he was confronted by four officers, he said.
CCTV footage showed Mr Luhaka being forced to the ground and beaten for eight minutes.
Mr Luhaka said one officer pulled down his trousers and assaulted him with a baton.
Bleeding, he was taken by police to the police station, where he was also racially abused.
Mr Luhaka was treated for serious injuries to his anus which were initially investigated as rape.
Prosecutors asked for a three-year suspended prison sentence for Castelain, who surrendered the baton and was charged with voluntary violence resulting in “permanent disability.”
For his two colleagues, Dulin and Hochart, they requested suspended sentences of six and three months for participating in aggravated voluntary violent assault. The case against the fourth officer was dropped.
