A 26-year-old Franco-Spanish engineer who took pictures during a demonstration in Paris on Thursday against pension reform was left without a testicle after a police officer hit him with a baton, his lawyer, who will file a lawsuit, said on Sunday. complaint, reports AFP.

The victim is preparing to file a complaint for voluntary violence resulting in mutilation by a person empowered by the state, the young man’s lawyer, Lucy Simon, told AFP, News.ro reported.

“This is a criminal case, we’re not in a self-defense situation or a state of necessity, based on the images we have and the fact that he wasn’t arrested later,” Simon said.

Images shared on social media and videos broadcast by BFMTV and AB7 Media show a police officer hitting the back of the man with a baton, who is holding a video camera in one hand. Having hit him, the policeman leaves.

According to him, another policeman knocked the man to the ground.

“It was such a strong blow that he had to remove one of his testicles. It was an extremely cruel and gratuitous gesture bordering on sadism,” said the engineer’s lawyer. The young man, who has dual citizenship, French and Spanish, is still in hospital. The engineer, who lives in Guadeloupe, “is still in a state of shock and constantly wonders why” he was injured. “He was not a danger, he is confused, shocked and angry because he is suffering irreversible consequences,” Simon said.

The scene took place during clashes between demonstrators and police near the Place de la Bastille, where stones were thrown and tear gas fired.

The Paris police headquarters told AFP on Saturday that an internal administrative investigation had been opened. Laurent Nuñez, prefect of police, asked the director of the Department of Public Order and Traffic (DOPC) to clarify the exact circumstances of the registered incident, the agency said. The incident occurred “in a context of extreme violence, as part of a police maneuver to arrest violent individuals,” the police prefecture added.

In the capital, the demonstration gathered 80,000 people, according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and 400,000, according to the trade unions.

Government spokesman Olivier Veran expressed his “sympathy” for the young man in the intervention on BFMTV, while stressing “the need to understand the circumstances in which this intervention took place” and “determine what constitutes a legitimate defence”.

“It was quite a heavy police intervention, some of them were assaulted,” he said. “When you look at the images, you inevitably have doubts” and “nothing justifies this kind of treatment, it hurts,” Veran admitted.