Théo Luhaka, 29, who has lifelong aftereffects, gave his version of the facts and his experience on Monday before the Seine-Saint-Denis Assize Court.
He walks to the bar with a cushion in his hand. “Hello everyone, my name is Théo Luhaka, I’m 29 years old and today I’m not doing much, I’m at home”, he presents himself, Monday January 15, in front of the Assize Court of Seine-Saint-Denis, before which three police officers involved in his arrest, on February 2, 2017 in Aulnay-sous-Bois, are referred. That day, the young man was seriously injured in the rectum by a police officer’s telescopic defense baton (BTD). Since then, he has suffered irreversible after-effects. He speaks standing up. A chair, on which he places the cushion, is installed to his right, in case he needs to sit down. His hearing, which begins late Monday, three and a half hours later than planned, is eagerly awaited: Théo Luhaka speaks in front of a packed courtroom.
“I have a lot to say but I prefer to let you ask questions”, declares the young man, in a deep voice, to the president of the Assize Court. The latter asks him to explain his feelings about what he experienced. “At the beginning I was in denial, I had a lot of support, I had a lot of people around me,” describes Théo Luhaka. His athletic figure hunched over the microphone, wearing a red down jacket over a beige ensemble, he talks about the personalities who came forward in his favor in the months following what he calls “the accident” : “I saw my favorite rappers, the football players I adored, it was my dream.” But little by little, from 2019, this support disappears. “They did what they could to help me, but there are limits, I’m just someone attacked by the police. I was abandoned and it took me a while to realize that I wasn’t being owes nothing”, he declares. “What happened to me changed me a lot. I was more bitter, angrier, meaner. I felt like I was the only human being suffering,” continues Théo Luhaka.
“I remember the shots but it remains very vague”
Gradually, the president of the Assize Court comes to the facts. On February 2, 2017, Théo Luhaka went out to bring a pair of shoes to a friend of his sister. It runs alongside the Cap, a cultural center in Aulnay-sous-Bois, where a police check takes place. The young man says: “I would never have intervened if the control had not started with a slap.” This is when the situation deteriorates. From that moment on, he thought about video surveillance. The recorded images were leaked during the investigation and played at the hearing. “When I struggled, I might have given a blow. The only idea I have in mind is to go into the camera’s corner, so if they leave me for dead I am filmed, declares Théo Luhaka. I remember the beatings but it’s still very vague.”
The young man’s description of the sequence of events is also confusing. However, in the middle of his story, he claims to have suffered “several blows from a baton behind the wall”, including in the buttocks, outside the cameras’ field of view, and in addition to the BTD shot which reached the perianal area. He wants as proof what his general practitioner told him in 2019. “He said to me, ‘There’s no way they hit that area in one shot.’ He describes being beaten and the police uttering racist insults towards him, particularly in their vehicle, during transport to the police station. “In the car, they were all proud of themselves, no one said there was a problem,” he said, while he was bleeding profusely from his buttocks.
The defense is surprised by such statements seven years later and points out the inconsistencies with the statements made during the hearings. “When my brothers and sisters watched the video in detail – I didn’t have the courage – they noticed several thrusts, as you say. So I say to myself one blow, maybe more,” retorts Théo Luhaka to the lawyer of Marc-Antoine C., the main accused, tried for “intentional violence resulting in permanent disability”. His lawyer, Antoine Vey, insists: “This is not the first time that you have said that you suffered violence, beatings behind the wall, with a baton?” Théo Luhaka confirms.
“Theo is the one who was raped”
After hearings from several experts, proctologists and psychologists, his testimony is also the time for Théo Luhaka to talk about the physical consequences. He who was destined for a career as a footballer, after dropping out of first grade, was never able to return to sport. “I saw clearly, from the first strides… No, no, not possible”, he said shaking his head. He suffers from incontinence and says he is embarrassed by “gases”. “The illness I have is the illness found in women who give birth. But I am not a woman, I did not give birth ma’am,” he explains, addressing the president of the Assize Court. He also wants to tell him about the reputation he now has in his neighborhood: “Theo is the one who was raped, the one who had his butt eaten by the police. That’s the image conveyed.”
To his lawyer, who asks him if he has “the feeling of having said everything”Théo Luhaka responds: “The reality of life is that I died on February 2, 2017. I really died, it’s not an image.” “Tomorrow, if there is police violence, we will talk about Théo again, whether I like it or not,” he adds, citing the demonstrations in which the first names of other victims are written on the signs, such as “Zyed, Bouna”, or Adama Traoré. “When the trial is over, the cops will continue. But my family, they will continue to have a living dead person,” confides Théo Luhaka in a broken voice. A “Undead” who watches TV in his room, where he now cloisters himself. He repeatedly cites Monkthis American series which features a detective suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder. The same one that he had planned to watch, before being arrested on February 2, 2017. With a desperate air, he blurted out on the stand: “I’m going to look Monk until the end of my life.”