Mahamadou Fofana died on September 14, 2020 while police tried to challenge him in the Yvelines. His body had been found in the Seine in Bougival by the police officers who were chasing him.
MO12345LEMONDE with AFP
Judicial information was opened at the end of January on the circumstances of the death of Mahamadou Fofana, cousin of Adama Traoré died in 2020 while he was prosecuted by the police in the Yvelines, announced the prosecution of Versailles.
On January 20, the investigation for voluntary homicide was entrusted to an investigating judge of Versailles, taking up “the facts as denounced in a complaint filed on July 8, 2022 with constitution of civil party”, specified the Parquet. Contacted by the France-Presse agency, the family lawyer was not reachable in the immediate future.
This opening of a judicial investigation follows the classification without follow -up, pronounced on March 30, 2021, of a first judicial information for “search for the causes of death”. According to the public prosecutor, the investigations had then “not made it possible to establish the existence of a criminal offense”.
“completely distorted skull”
On September 14, 2020, Mahamadou Fofana died at the age of 35 while police tried to challenge him in the Yvelines. His body had been found in the Seine in Bougival by the police who were chasing him. According to the police, no violence was committed and the man died drowned while he was trying to return to the shore after wanting to escape them. But the family, who saw the body to the morgue, challenged this version: Assa Traoré, the sister of Adama Traoré, notably mentioned a “completely distorted skull”.
It is in this context that an investigation for research of the causes of death had been entrusted to an investigating judge. The classification without follow-up was based in particular on “forensic expertise (…) confirmed by the counter-autopsy operations requested by the civil party and led by a college of experts”, had explained the prosecution.
Mahamadou Fofana is presented by the family as the cousin of Adama Traoré, a young black man of 24 years died in 2016 in controversial circumstances after his arrest by gendarmes in the Val-d’Oise. This case found in France a strong echo after the planetary wave of indignation aroused by death in May 2020 in the United States of George Floyd, a black man killed by a white policeman.