Aspiring footballer left with 'serious anal injuries' after being brutally assaulted by three police officers
An aspiring footballer has been left with 'serious anal injuries' after being brutally assaulted by three police officers, who have all been given suspended prison sentences.
Theodore Luhaka was teargassed and hit in the head after a stop-and-search by police in the Paris suburb of Aulnay-sous-Bois in February 2017.
The police officers assaulted Luhaka, aged 22 at the time of the attack, with batons and left his anus perforated and he is now incontinent, the trial heard.
He was beaten, racially abused and spat at during the horrific ordeal.
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CCTV footage showed Luhaka forced to the ground, where he was beaten for eight minutes.
He was treated for serious injuries to his anus, which were initially investigated as rape.
Luhaka says he has been "living dead" since the day he was arrested.
The rape charges were dropped after the court failed to class his injuries as a permanent disability.
The three police officers who carried out the attack, Marc-Antoine Castelain, Jeremie Dulin, and Tony Hochart, were convicted of voluntary violence on Friday.
Castelain, 34, received a 12-month suspended sentence and was found guilty of a truncheon blow that seriously injured Luhaka.
Dulin, 42, and Hochart, 31, were slapped with three-month suspended sentences for intentional violence.
The case sparked two weeks of unrest and protests on housing estates in Paris and across France.
He had no criminal record and was about to move to Belgium to start a professional football career, having been a young sports mentor.
Luhaka, now aged 29, told the Assizes court in Bobigny: "I felt like I was raped."
Antoine Vey, Luhaka's lawyer, described the outcome as a "victory", adding: "Theo was a victim and nothing justifies that he was beaten."
Topics: Football
Nasir Jabbar