Four police officers in France were ordered to stand trial on Friday on charges that they assaulted a Black man in November 2020. The beating, which was caught on a security camera, fueled intense debates about police brutality in the country.
But the investigative judges who sent the case to trial dropped charges that two of the officers had acted with a racist motive. The judges said there was not enough evidence to support the accusation of the man, Michel Zecler, a music producer well known in the world of French rap, that the officers had hurled a racial slur at him during the episode.
The removal of the racism charge does not change the maximum sentence that the two officers face, nor will it prohibit Mr. Zecler from speaking freely about his experience at trial. But his legal team expressed disappointment.
“We regret that the aggravating circumstance was not taken into account,” Agence-France Presse quoted Caroline Toby, one of Mr. Zecler’s lawyers, as saying on Friday, referring to the racism charge. She added that evidence and testimonies had confirmed Mr. Zecler’s account.
Three of the officers are accused of assaulting Mr. Zecler at his Paris music studio and filing a misleading police report, according to the city’s prosecutor’s office. Their report said that Mr. Zecler had violently resisted arrest after an ID check; the video showed that the officers had beat him.
Charged mainly with forgery and aggravated assault, they face 15-year prison sentences and fines of €225,000, about $264,000. They have been identified only as Aurélien L., Philippe T. and Pierre P., in accordance with French custom.
A fourth officer, identified as Hughes R., was charged only with aggravated violence on the accusation that he threw a tear gas grenade in Mr. Zecler’s studio before his arrest. That officer faces a three-year prison sentence and a fine of €45,000.
The police officers have admitted using excess force but denied any racist motive.
At the time of the episode, France was roiled by debates on race and police brutality — a recurring issue — in the wake of the killing of George Floyd in May 2020 in the United States. Also at that time, the government was pushing for a security bill that included restrictions on filming the police, a provision that was eventually scrapped.
President Emmanuel Macron said at the time that there was “nothing to excuse, to justify” the beating. He later said on social media that the video’s content had “shamed” the country.
In their initial police report, the officers said they had been trying to carry out an ID check on Mr. Zecler because he was not wearing a face mask, an obligation at the time because of the Covid-19 pandemic, and because he smelled strongly of marijuana.
They said that he had refused and had entered his studio, where he turned violent as he resisted arrest. They also said that a dozen people in the music studio had come to his aid. In their report, the officers said they had left the studio to wait for backup and then returned to arrest those present.
Footage of the assault from a camera inside the studio, published a few days later by Loopsider, a French news site, showed a different story.
In the video, three officers push Mr. Zecler inside the studio and then take turns beating him, sometimes with a police baton. Musicians who had been recording in his studio downstairs then intervened.
Additional footage filmed by residents in the street showed officers again beating Mr. Zecler until he eventually surrendered and was taken to a police station.
In an interview with The New York Times shortly after the attack, Mr. Zecler said he would have ended up in prison if it were not for the video.
In a social media message posted last year on the fourth anniversary of the episode, Mr. Zecler said it was “simply unjustifiable” to wait so long for a trial to take place “in a case as clear as mine.”
“I would love to tell you one comes out unscathed from this physical and emotional turbulence,” he wrote. “But I would be lying if I did.”
Aurelien Breeden contributed reporting.
Ségolène Le Stradic is a reporter and researcher covering France.
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