Three French police officers are to go on trial over the beating of a black music producer who they say was not wearing a face mask during the Covid pandemic, in a rare case of police brutality reaching court.
The assault on Michel Zecler, now 47, triggered fresh outrage in France over police violence, which victims and researchers say is systemic but authorities and law enforcement unions claim is limited to isolated cases.
Zecler expects accountability
“I expect this trial to hold the police officers accountable,” Zecler told Agence France-Presse in a recent interview.
Campaigners and rights groups have said the case was further evidence of what they saw as the French police’s systemic racism, in a country where they said ethnic minorities received harsher treatment than white people.
Police brutality has been in the spotlight during the student-led protests in recent weeks, during which a 14-year-old lost most of his teeth when a police officer appeared to fire a grenade at him at close range.
The assault and charges
Police stopped Zecler outside his Paris studio on 21 November 2020, accusing him of failing to wear a mandatory face mask and suspecting him of cannabis use.
They pushed him into the entrance of his office and violently beat him in an assault recorded by his studio’s security cameras.
Police officers Aurelien B, now aged 29, Pierre P, 37, and Philippe T face charges of intentional violence committed in a group, as well as forgery when they tried to cover up their actions in an official report. They face up to 15 years in jail.
The officers’ lawyers declined to comment before the trial, which starts on Monday.
Injuries and disputed reports
The producer sustained around 30 punches and truncheon blows to the face and body over a five-minute period, according to the investigation.
The medical report noted craniofacial trauma, a wound to the lip and scalp, and a complete rupture of his biceps tendon, leaving him unable to perform his job for 45 days.
France’s human rights ombudswoman has said police used “racist insults” during the assault, according to four witnesses. But the officers denied this and the alleged racism was not included in the indictment.
Zecler said they had used a racist slur against him. “I was insulted and I will repeat this at the hearing,” he said.
In their arrest report, the officers claimed the producer had hit them and tried to seize a truncheon, a version of events refuted by the camera footage that the French media website Loopsider released several days later.
“I don’t understand the hatred I saw in their eyes,” said Zecler, who has a titanium anchor in his left arm after the ruptured tendon and says he still suffers nightmares.
“If there hadn’t been cameras... their reports would have been enough to send me to prison,” he said.
Rare prosecutions
Most cases of alleged police brutality in France are dealt with internally.
A French police officer is to be tried over shooting dead 17-year-old Nahel Merzouk at point-blank range in June 2023 outside Paris. Video footage also contradicted the police’s version of events in that incident, sparking nationwide protests.
Guilty verdicts in alleged police brutality cases are rare.
In 2024, a judge gave suspended jail sentences to three officers who inflicted irreversible rectal injuries on a black man, Theo Luhaka, during a stop-and-search in 2017.
Young men “perceived as Arab, black or from North Africa” are four times more likely to be stopped by police than the rest of the population, according to a report last year by France’s rights ombudswoman.
They are 12 times more likely to be subjected to more severe measures, including being frisked during checks, it said after a survey of more than 5,000 people.
