A French court has given three police officers a suspended prison sentence for leaving a man with “serious anal injuries” after he was arrested and searched.
Theodor Lohaka was also tear gassed and hit in the head when he was stopped by police when he was 22 years old in the Paris suburb of Aulnay-sous-Bois in February 2017.
The trial heard that the assault with a police baton resulted in a perforated anus and he is now incontinent.
The police officers who arrested him, Marc-Antoine Castellane, Jeremy Dolin and Tony Hochart, were found guilty of voluntary violence on Friday.
Castelin, who was initially charged with rape, was sentenced to one year in prison, while his colleagues, who were found to have beaten Mr. Luhaka, were sentenced to three months in prison.
The case of Lohaka, known as Theo, sparked two weeks of riots throughout the suburbs of Paris and throughout France.
He had no criminal record and was about to move to Belgium to start his professional football career.
After the accident, he received support from actor Omar Sy and was visited in hospital by President François Hollande.
Victim says he is 'living dead'
Luhaka, now 29, says he has been “living dead” since the day he was arrested.
The court failed to classify his injuries as permanent disability, and thus dismissed the rape charges against Castelin.
He previously said he would support any guilty verdict, regardless of the punishment.
Protesters in a confrontation with police in Paris over the police assault on Théodor Lohaca in 2017
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But the protesters outside the court were angry.
Among them is Samia Al-Khalafawy, whose nephew Suhail was killed by a police officer in 2021.
“It's a masquerade to have a suspended sentence for mutilating Theo for life,” she said.
Luhaka's lawyer, Antoine Fay, described the result as a “victory”, which “confirms that Theo was a victim and nothing justifies his being beaten.”
This comes after the 17-year-old boy, Nahil Marzouk, was killed by police gunfire in the Paris suburb of Nanterre in June last year.
Riots in French cities and suburbs have often been sparked by incidents of police brutality against people from ethnic minority backgrounds.
