Almost ten years after the death of Adama Traoré in a gendarmerie in Val-d'Oise, the Court of Cassation confirmed, on Wednesday, the dismissal of the case pronounced in August 2023 then confirmed in May 2024 on appeal. The family's lawyer announced that he would seize the ECHR "to have France condemned".

Published on: 02/11/2026 - 3:09 p.m. Modified on: 02/11/2026 - 5:02 p.m.

Justice has ruled. The Court of Cassation confirmed, Wednesday February 11, the dismissal of the case of the death of Adama Traoré, a decision which has become final but denounced by his family, who now hopes to obtain the conviction of France before European justice.

After ten years of legal battle, the relatives of this young black man who died in July 2016 in a gendarmerie in Val-d'Oise see their hopes of relaunching the investigation in this case which has become a symbol of accusations of violence and racism by the police disappear.

In a 15-page judgment, the highest judicial court rejected all the arguments they raised, refusing to annul the dismissal pronounced in favor of the gendarmes in August 2023 then confirmed in May 2024 on appeal. The judges followed the general prosecutor's office.

This dismissal, which benefited the three gendarmes who handcuffed Adama Traoré in an apartment in Beaumont-sur-Oise (Val-d'Oise) on July 19, 2016, at the end of a chase on a day when it was nearly 37°C, is now final. The 24-year-old young man, arrested during an operation targeting his brother Bagui, died two hours later in the neighboring Persan barracks.

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“No serious fault”

The criminal chamber of the Court of Cassation judges the judges' refusal to order new investigations, including a reconstruction, to be consistent with the law. This has always been refused to the Traoré family to shed light on the circumstances of the arrest and death.

In this case, where the arrest took place without an outside witness and where the investigation gave rise to numerous expert opinions and medical reports, the court of appeal considered that the actions of the gendarmes had contributed to the death of Adama Traoré, but remained within the framework of the law.

The family accuses the soldiers of having carried out a ventral restraint for several minutes, which would have caused death, and then of not having come to the aid of the young man who had felt unwell in their vehicle and who had been left handcuffed until the firefighters arrived.

The criminal chamber validates the judges' reasoning on the "assistance" given to Adama Traoré, "adapted to their awareness of the danger incurred". “There has been no proven fault on the part of the gendarmes exposing (Adama Traoré) to a particularly serious risk which they could not ignore,” underlines the judgment.

“We are scandalized, shocked,” reacted as she left the audience the victim’s sister, Assa Traoré, leading figure of the “Truth and Justice for Adama” committee.

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“The Adama Traoré affair brought the issue of police violence to the highest level (...) The French police are racist, the French judicial system is racist. Today, they protected the gendarmes, but we know the truth,” she accused.

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The family turns to European justice

At his side, the lawyer for Adama Traoré's family, Me Yassine Bouzrou, announced that he would refer the matter to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) "to have France condemned".

After years of investigation, justice recognized that the young man's death was caused by "heat stroke" which "probably" would not have been fatal without the arrest of the gendarmes. “Yet today, (the Court of Cassation) ratifies impunity” he then denounced in a press release sent to AFP. In this case, "a prosecutor gave false information and doctors invented pathologies", before the case was relocated from Pontoise to Paris, he declared.

The civil parties had to call on "independent experts" to force "justice to admit after eight years what everyone knew: Adama Traoré died under the weight of the gendarmes, and not from an alleged heatstroke", affirms M Bouzrou. “The justice system refused any reconstruction, flouting the most basic rules of an investigation worthy of the name (...) The French justice system did everything to cover up the affair, refusing to assess the proportionality of the force used,” he protests.

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“The facts are tragic and that takes nothing away from the compassion we can have for the civil parties, but for the gendarmes it is a relief,” reacted one of their lawyers, Me Guillaume Tapie, who believes that “the investigation was complete and extremely thorough”.

The decision immediately sparked political reactions. “French justice is once again covering up the gendarmes who commit police violence,” denounced LFI MP Thomas Portes. “The honor (of the gendarmes) is now safe and their reputation restored”, on the contrary reacted the boss of the RN, Jordan Bardella.

With AFP

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