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ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-4742-5
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Fassin, Didier, author.
Title: Death of a traveller: a counter investigation / Didier Fassin; translated by Rachel Gomme.
Other titles: Mort d’un voyageur. English
Description: Medford : Polity Press, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references. | Summary: “A leading anthropologist shows how the police and the justice system work against marginalized communities”-- Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020046192 (print) | LCCN 2020046193 (ebook) | ISBN 9781509547401 (hardback) | ISBN 9781509547418 (paperback) | ISBN 9781509547425 (epub) | ISBN 9781509548071 (pdf)
Subjects: LCSH: Discrimination in criminal justice administration--France--Case studies. | Romanies--Crimes against. | Homicide--France--Case studies. | Police shootings--France--Case studies. | Romanies--France--Social conditions. | Minorities--Crimes against--France | Minorities--Legal status, laws, etc.--France.
Classification: LCC HV9960.F8 F3713 2021 (print) | LCC HV9960.F8 (ebook) | DDC 364.152092--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020046192 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020046193
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Dedication
For Angelo’s sister, for his parents, and for all those who fight for truth and justice on behalf of the ones injured or killed by the police
The truth was a mirror in the hands of God. It fell, and broke into pieces. Everybody took a piece of it, and they looked at it and thought they had the truth.
Djalâl al-Dîn Muhammad Rûmî
The more affects we are able to put into words about a thing, the more eyes, various eyes we are able to use for the same thing, the more complete will be our ‘concept’ of the thing, our ‘objectivity’.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Acknowledgments
This project would not have been undertaken without the collaboration of Angelo’s family. I am profoundly grateful for the trust they placed in me throughout my work and for the integrity they showed, in spite of the pain this story still aroused in them more than two years after the tragedy. My thanks are also due to the other people involved in this case, particularly in the Justice and Truth Collective. I am equally indebted to the lawyers and magistrates who gave me the benefit of their insight and their skill as well as their view of the victim, the events that led to his death and the judicial procedure that followed, and in particular to the public prosecutor who generously granted me access to the case file. Having chosen to maintain the anonymity of the protagonists and not to name the places where they live and work, I cannot express my gratitude to them by name.
The research on which this book is based was supported by funds from the NOMIS Foundation within the context of a research program I designed around the theme of crisis. The warm welcome this unconventional project received from Séverine Nikel at Le Seuil, before even a single line had been written, played an important role in my decision to carry it through, and our subsequent discussions helped me to clarify my position in this experimental writing. It is a pleasure for me to have it now published by Polity, and I am thankful to John Thompson for having fast-tracked its publication. The translation made by Rachel Gomme is once more remarkable for its attentiveness to the slightest semantic inflections in the text. And Munirah Bishop’s help has been, as always, precious.
Finally, the almost daily conversations I had with Anne-Claire Defossez throughout the period of writing, and her comments on the book, helped me to resolve a number of problems that I faced, to reorient myself when I went off track, to clear the doubts that obscured the way forward, and – without reaching them – to test the limits of her patience.
A Simple Story Preface to the English Edition
It is a simple story. Somewhere in France, a man from the Traveller community is sought after he fails to return from home leave to the prison where he has been serving time for a number of robberies that did not involve violence. As he is visiting with his parents at the family farm, an elite unit of the gendarmerie, the GIGN, heavily equipped and armed, launches a major operation. Hiding in the dark in a lean-to, he is discovered and killed. The men who shot him assert that he attacked them with a knife and they were obliged to fire in legitimate self-defense, but not before they had announced their presence and attempted to bring him under control without the use of weapons. Five members of his family who are present outside the lean-to, held handcuffed on the ground at machinegun point a few yards from the site of the events, maintain that the shots came only a few seconds after the gendarmes entered the lumber room, without either warning or the sounds of a struggle. An inquiry is immediately opened by the national gendarmerie’s investigation department; its conclusions support the account given by their colleagues. The public prosecutor makes a statement that reiterates this version but, because a man has died, requests a judicial investigation. Taking into consideration some troubling elements in witness statements and expert witness reports, the examining magistrate decides to place the two officers who fired the shots under investigation. However, eighteen months later, just before giving her ruling, she is transferred to another jurisdiction. The colleague who takes over from her is in her first posting as examining magistrate and has to draw up the final ruling immediately after her appointment. She follows the public prosecutor’s analysis and dismisses the case. The family lodges an appeal. It ends with the same ruling. The two GIGN men who fired the fatal shots will therefore never be brought to trial. Deeply traumatized by her brother’s death, suspecting from the outset that the gendarmes are lying, and shocked by the speed with which the public prosecutor moved to validate their version of the events, Angelo’s sister commits publicly to ensuring that, as she puts it, the truth is told and justice done. She takes the lead in a local campaign that echoes those led by other young women whose brothers have also died in interactions with law enforcement without the officers involved in these deaths ever being convicted. When the final appeal is rejected by the Court of Cassation she submits a petition to the European Court of Human Rights, in the hope that it will issue a judgment
