Death of a Traveller. Didier Fassin

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A Simple Story Preface to the English Edition

It is a simple story. Somewhere in France, a man from the Traveller community is sought after he fails to return from home leave to the prison where he has been serving time for a number of robberies that did not involve violence. As he is visiting with his parents at the family farm, an elite unit of the gendarmerie, the GIGN, heavily equipped and armed, launches a major operation. Hiding in the dark in a lean-to, he is discovered and killed. The men who shot him assert that he attacked them with a knife and they were obliged to fire in legitimate self-defense, but not before they had announced their presence and attempted to bring him under control without the use of weapons. Five members of his family who are present outside the lean-to, held handcuffed on the ground at machinegun point a few yards from the site of the events, maintain that the shots came only a few seconds after the gendarmes entered the lumber room, without either warning or the sounds of a struggle. An inquiry is immediately opened by the national gendarmerie’s investigation department; its conclusions support the account given by their colleagues. The public prosecutor makes a statement that reiterates this version but, because a man has died, requests a judicial investigation. Taking into consideration some troubling elements in witness statements and expert witness reports, the examining magistrate decides to place the two officers who fired the shots under investigation. However, eighteen months later, just before giving her ruling, she is transferred to another jurisdiction. The colleague who takes over from her is in her first posting as examining magistrate and has to draw up the final ruling immediately after her appointment. She follows the public prosecutor’s analysis and dismisses the case. The family lodges an appeal. It ends with the same ruling. The two GIGN men who fired the fatal shots will therefore never be brought to trial. Deeply traumatized by her brother’s death, suspecting from the outset that the gendarmes are lying, and shocked by the speed with which the public prosecutor moved to validate their version of the events, Angelo’s sister commits publicly to ensuring that, as she puts it, the truth is told and justice done. She takes the lead in a local campaign that echoes those led by other young women whose brothers have also died in interactions with law enforcement without the officers involved in these deaths ever being convicted. When the final appeal is rejected by the Court of Cassation she submits a petition to the European Court of Human Rights, in the hope that it will issue a judgment СКАЧАТЬ