False start for the trial of eight Liège police officers accused of degrading treatment

The criminal court certainly viewed the images of the body camera that one of the agents triggered involuntarily during this intervention. But it was not further: the defendants should have been heard in their explanations of the facts, beatings and bullying, but it was postponed to the end of May. In question, an incomplete file, and a procedural incident.

Several defense lawyers argue that the prosecution is inadmissible. The young man who was arrested that day has already been tried for rebellion. He benefited from a large leniency of his judge, who on the other hand castigated the attitude of the police. The police would therefore have already been convicted in advance, and the Liège justice would now be unable to conduct serene debates.

To this argument, the king’s prosecutor responded with a “Mathot case law”. In the multiple episodes of the Intradel affair, the fact that an accused was condemned as corrupt did not prevent, then and separately, from judging the supposed corrupter, which the Court of Cassation validated. In this case, a first decision on part of the events does not bind the magistrate who now knows the rest… The epilogue is not expected before September.