At the bar, without showing any particular emotion, the accused confirms that he is still a police officer, before the jury is called.

«I feel very bad, very anxious», it is «a test of having to dive back and relive this moment», confides on his arrival the complainant, Maxime Beux.

«What I lost that evening I will not find it», he adds, «»satisfied» yet that his case has «arrived at the assizes». He is awaiting a «criminal conviction of the one who is responsible».

The defendant’s lawyers, Nicolas Brazy and Pascal Ammoura, did not wish to speak before the opening of the trial.

Judged for «violence with the use or threat of a weapon followed by mutilation or permanent disability», the policeman, aged 50, faces 15 years of criminal imprisonment.

He had tried to challenge his dismissal to the assizes, before the Reims Court of Appeal and then the Court of Cassation. In vain.

On February 13, 2016, after the match won by SC Bastia, a group of Corsican supporters joined the city center where clashes broke out with the police.

Among the Bastiais, Maxime Beux, 22 years old at the time, kicked the car of the police officer in question. This one catches up with him and sends him, according to him, a blow of a telescopic stick to «stop him in his tracks».

The accused, then a member of the BAC (anti-crime brigade) from Reims, explains that the young man fell and that his head «hit the top of a metal post», causing his eye injury.

«Abracadabrantesque» according to the victim’s lawyer, Me Benjamin Genuini, who cites two medical reports according to which «the injury coincides with a blow from a telescopic baton», which caused the irreversible functional loss of the left eye.

Four days after the match, a judicial investigation is opened against X for intentional violence. Maxime Beux is heard as a civil party.

Faced with the expertise, the policeman, originally from Reims, ends up recognizing that the eye injury was caused by the baton, but says he acted «in execution of an order». Responsible for patrolling the city center, he was to «arrest people disturbing public order».

Verdict Friday.